


The Art of Scraping Through

by contrequirose



Series: garden in your soul [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flashbacks, Multi, Political Intrigue, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, a little fast and loose with the timelines here, candy making 2 electric boogaloo, canon typical warnings for Caleb's backstory, i love allura vysoren and yussah errenis: the musical, psychologically and narratively speaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-03-02 10:08:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18809011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrequirose/pseuds/contrequirose
Summary: Archmage Ikithon, a man of talent and supreme annoyance, brought three students to a diplomatic meeting with the Arcana Pansophical.This choice has far-reaching complications, especially when you factor in a healthy scoop of meddling foreign mages, a goblin butler, and an elf who has far too much of a soft spot for adventurers.Because after all - Allura Vysoren has faced down dragons, demons, and Vox Machina before they got their act together.A single corrupt mage? Hell - even an entire fleet of corrupt mages?Well.She welcomes the challenge.





	1. We Three Friends

**Author's Note:**

> its me, lover of astrid and eodwulf and vintage candy making, back once again.
> 
> this fic will make much, much more sense if you've read the previous two! But, if you decide not to, just keep in mind that this is an au based around the concept that Astrid and Eodwulf escaped from Ikithon with the help of the Archeart, moved into Nicodranas, and became candy makers. Also, they're in love, all three of them, because I make the rules.

818 P.D. (Roughly a year before Graduation)

“Do you have any tips for the –“ Astrid pauses to hurl a fistful of acid at the wall, and then continues, “- the dragon breath spell? I can’t get the visualization right and every time I try and cast it it just feels like I have indigestion.”

Eodwulf clears the acid and casts mending with a lazy wave.

“I just think about that time Bren ate a ghoul pepper, that first week.” Wulf smirks, and he thwacks him on the shoulder with his textbook.

“I think you just need more practice, Astrid.” He flips a page in his textbook, and watches as she sighs and sits on the edge of the bed, hanging upside down.

She tosses another ball of acid at the wall – the poor wall, he thinks to himself, and muffles a laugh – and Wulf flicks her in the back of the head with one hand, fixing the damage with the other.

“What’s the wall ever do to you, Astrid.” He pulls a glow worm from his pocket into his free hand and forms a figure out of dancing lights, sending it to swirl around her head.

She bats at it and scowls at him.

“I think my aim’s off, I just want to –“

She falls silent.

In an instant, she and Wulf are scrambling off the bed, standing at attention facing the doorway. He shuts his textbook with a slam and practically flies off, standing in the center of his friends within an instant of the first echo of footsteps in the hallway outside.

The steps get louder, and then louder –

The door opens with its usual creak, and Master Ikithon surveys them with a careful eye.

“We will be leaving in twenty minutes. I will meet you outside.”

Bren gives him a solemn nod, and Master Ikithon nods back, before shutting the door and continuing down the hallway, the sound of his boots fading the farther he gets from the door.

He can practically hear Astrid tapping out counts behind him, and he keeps track in his own head.

When a minute – two minutes – three minutes –

The footsteps do not return.

He and the others sink of attention and Eodwulf flops on the bed, a frown tracing its way across his face.

“I really thought we had today off.” He pushes himself up on his elbows, and full out scowls. “Actually, unless I’ve somehow slept through the whole day, I know that we had today off. So what’s –“

Astrid, busy pulling on her boots, just shakes her head. “He seemed kind of mad, maybe something just came up?”

Bren rubs his arms, unconsciously, smoothing out the already smooth edges of the white bandages lining his arms under the sleeves of his robes.

They were supposed to have today off, is the thing. He had just – he had just had the crystals taken out yesterday (at least he thinks it was yesterday. The fever that had come on with the removal of the crystals had been overpowering, for a long time inside his head – it may have been more than a few days ago. He hasn’t bothered to ask Wulf and Astrid yet, but they probably know how long – well, maybe later), and his arms were still unhealed, even hidden as they are beneath the bandages.

Magical healing does not interact well with the crystals. He knows that – intimately.

He hasn’t gotten in a full nights rest since the last training session, before the crystals had been removed. He’s pretty much tapped.

But Ikithon knows that.

So probably not a mission?

Astrid taps him on the shoulder, and he blinks out of his thoughts.

She has his boots in one hand and his belt in the other, a worried look on her face.

“Bren, you haven’t slept?”

She knows him so well.

“It’s fine, Astrid.”

He hopes it’s not a mission.

But, regardless, they have five minutes until they need to be outside.

Eodwulf, by the door, already had his boots and belt on, and he’s currently strapping his spell component bag and book to the belt, fingers tying knots with a careful twist.

He shakes his head once, to clear it of any remaining concerns, and falls into the usual habit of preparing for a mission, spell book strapped at his hip and components tied to the other side.

He gives a nod to Eodwulf and Astrid, and they step out into the hallway, heels clicking on the stone floor.

Master Ikithon stands outside, robes billowing in the chilled wind. It’s nearly six, now – dinner had been about to start, and he hopes with a cheerfulness that he knows is misplaced that wherever they’re going, food will be present – and the sky is dark, the sun having already set beneath the mountains that overshadow the cottage.

He holds out an empty palm, and Astrid places her hand in his. Eodwulf joins on the opposite side, and he stands in between them, fingers intertwining with them both.

Master Ikithon frowns, heavy on his face. “We are heading to Emon, in Tal’Dorei.”

Bren has just enough time to take a breath and hold it before the world around him is twisting, the ground falling way beneath his feet as the four of them tumble through the void, darkness and light swirling in equal turns around him, thick winds and absolute silence buffeting him in sequence –

The ground reforms beneath him, and the void pops, leaving them standing in a market square, the sun bright overhead and the cheerful noise of a bustling economy present all around him.

He resists the urge to snatch his hands away and press them to his ears to dull out the noise.

Master Ikithon turns, sharply, and leads them through the square to the main streets, blocks of the city passing in near silence.

They pass businesses, homes, gardens, parks, more markets – Emon is a bustling city, nearly recovered from the attack, although he can still spot its remnants in scorch marks upon the flagstones and walls shored up with fire blackened wood.

He leads them to the richer part of the city, and stops before a massive tower, high walls of polished stone standing high above them.

He raps on the door with an unhurried force, and Bren watches as his master’s face loses the frown and adopts the casual smile that he is used to seeing him display in balls and galas.

Ah. Probably a political mission, then.

Definitely for the best, given the state of exhaustion that he can feel tugging at the corners of his mind.

The door opens a moment later, and he does, to his surprise, recognize the woman who looks out over them. Lady Allura Vysoren – the newly appointed head of the Arcana Pansophical.

He can hear Astrid, behind him, take in a small gasping breath, and he smiles inwardly, long familiar with the admiration that she holds for Lady Vysoren.

She stares out at the four of them, and quirks an eyebrow.

“Archmage Ikithon, a pleasure. May I ask why you’ve brought students to this meeting?” She frowns, emotions blatant on her face.

Master Ikithon steps forward, and extends his arms, palms upturned. “I apologize, Lady Vysoren, but these are my students, who have been studying at my home over this academic year. I did not feel comfortable leaving them there by themselves, so I unfortunately had to bring them with me. I hope that this is not too much of an inconvenience, for you?” His voice is light and simpering, and Bren bites back another smile.

The Ikithon that they know – their teacher, who is free with pain but masterful with magic, who is training them to be more powerful than they could other be elsewise – is not the Ikithon that the rest of the world gets – an archmage, yes, but widely considered to be a fool.

Also widely considered to be an annoyance, at best.

He sympathizes with Lady Vysoren for whatever she had done to be subjected to Master Ikithon at his worst for the next few hours.

Lady Vysoren blinks, and gestures the four of them into the entryway of her tower.

“Of course, of course – If you so desire, I can –“

She taps her fingers together – a nervous habit, he notes, and stores that in the back of his mind.

“I can ask one of my friends, in the city, to watch over them for a few hours, if you wish. His name is Gilmore – you may have heard of him, he’s a relatively well known arcanist.”

Bren can just spot the hint of pleasure in Ikithon’s eye before it is masked by incompetence, and he wonders if that is what Ikithon had been working towards, by bringing them.

Possibly an information gathering mission, then.

He can do that.

“That would be very kind of you, if you may. I apologize for being the one here for this meeting  - Oremid Hass is sadly no longer going to be available for diplomatic missions, and so I have been chosen as his replacement. The Cerberus Assembly send their regards, of course.” He bows his head, lightly, and in the moment where Ikithon is no longer staring at her face he catches a flash of resentment cross Lady Vysoren’s.

Interesting.

“Of course. If you could give me just a moment.”

He watches her twist his fingers together, and as they lock into place, she speaks, words carrying with them an undercurrent of arcane power.

“Shaun, I am meeting with a member of the Assembly, who has some students with him. Would you be willing to watch over them, please?” She waits a moment, face masked with concentration, and then relaxes.

“He will be here momentarily. Can I offer you any refreshments, in the mean time?” She waves a hand, and the cart against the wall that he had previously ignored is illuminated by a pair of lights, twirling above a few bottles of wine and some plates of food.

Ikithon shakes his head, and Bren bites back what he had been about to say.

Judging by the sunlight outside, it’s only noon in Emon.

A fair few hours before sleep or food, most likely.

Hm.

Master Ikithon makes small talk with Lady Vysoren while he and the others wait in silence, still standing mostly at attention. Minutes pass of just – meaningless compliments and platitudes, and he watches with inward amusement as the annoyance Lady Vysoren is exuding grows.

It’s not too long before the front door opens again, and a man steps through, extravagant purple clothes and gold finery draped across his visage. He shoots a grin to Lady Vysoren, and she sends him a fond smile back.

“My friend, how good to see you – I assume that these are the students? And hello to you as well, Archmage – good to see you again. It’s been a while!”

The man – Gilmore, he assumes, continues to grin at Ikithon’s carefully controlled nod – and it is, controlled, even beyond the constraints of the mask he has strapped to his normally somber person.

Master Ikithon really does not like this man, he realizes, and tucks that away with the notes that he has been generating.

Gilmore, Lady Vysoren, and Master Ikithon share a casual conversation before splitting off, Ikithon and Lady Vysoren ascending the stairs, presumably to head to her office.

Gilmore turns towards them, and clasps his hands together.

“As Allura probably said, my name is Gilmore, and I am a shopkeeper, technically, although I have a large amount of experience with the Arcane. I actually have some dear, dear friend’s visiting right now, so we will be heading over to my shop – I hope that’s alright.”

He nods, and Astrid and Eodwulf mirror his movement.

It’s not like they have much choice.

Gilmore leads them out of the tower and through the streets of Emon before stopping at a shopfront, covered in bright overhands and carefully stenciled letters reading “Gilmore’s Glorious Goods”.

He takes a spare moment to think that Eodwulf has better hand lettering before Gilmore leads them through the dark shop – a sign on the door reads “Closed for Family Emergency”, and he feels a brief pang of – something.

Gilmore leads them upstairs, and the dark empty shop transforms into a brightly lit apartment, a pair of overstuffed couches placed in front of a roaring fire and a small kitchen to one side, doors in the back leading elsewhere. Seated in the room is a red tiefling, a human, and a half-elf, whose conversation fades as they hear them coming up the stairs.

There’s a hastily corked bottle of wine on the table, and he can just see the tell-tale marks of crying on the half-elf’s face, seemingly having been wiped off as fast as possible.

Oh, dear.

The half-elf plasters a smile to her face and waves at them.

The human just sort of – glares.

He’s too tired to deal with this.

Astrid clears her throat.

“If we are – inconveniencing you, we can just – entertain ourselves outside, or in a separate room – or…” she lets her voice trail off, body practically radiating discomfort. He brushes his hand across hers, and she untenses slightly.

“No, no – you’re fine. These are some dear friends of mine – Zahra, Kashaw, and Keyleth. And these are students of Archmage Ikithon, that Allura has asked us to watch over while she carries on with the check-in regarding the Pansophical.”

The half-elf – Keyleth - brushes another tear off her face, and then seems to light up from within, excitement seeming to take hold and eradicating her previous melancholy.

She waves, again, and Eodwulf waves back.

They spend the next hour making stilted small talk with these people, Zahra and Kashaw telling tales of their children – twins, apparently, and a handful especially combined with the fact that they are toddlers who know thaumaturgy. Keyleth tells them a story from the time of the conclave attacks, some long-winded tale of her and her adventuring group, Vox Machina – he’s heard their name before, from a passing mention at the Academy, but the way she speaks of the group speaks much more to their character than the half-assed idea he had before. Gilmore chimes in, from time to time, with mentions of someone named Vax that sends the conversation darker before one of them brings it back up.

He assumes that they were mourning him, today. An anniversary, or a reminder – whatever it was, the four of them clearly loved him.

Gilmore actually offers them food, towards the end of the first hour, and Astrid and Eodwulf agree with possibly too much enthusiasm, his nod a beat behind.

He’s been awake for much, much too long. But food – food would be nice.

There’s a moment, when he is eating alongside Astrid and Wulf, that the sleeves of his robe slip down to reveal carefully wound bandages around his forearms. His arms hurt, but it’s a background ache that is so constant that he has shoved it nearly beyond his mind.

Keyleth offers to heal him, if he is injured, but he just shakes his head and focuses on eating.

He can hear, faintly, Astrid explaining that they were just leftovers from a training incident, no healing required, but he’s more concerned with trying to stay awake then stay truly keyed into the conversation.

They sit in Gilmore’s lounge for hours, until he can tell by his internal clock that it is pushing midnight, at home, and near six here.

The conversation has dwindled at this point, just Keyleth still telling some story involving cliffs, and goldfish – he hasn’t been paying attention at all, which will most likely be to his detriment when Ikithon asks for reports later but he’s so tired that it’s hard to even consider that.

Astrid laughs, leaned against him, and he jerks his head up from where he had nearly fallen into her, blinking frantically.

He ignores the concerned looks that the adults are sending his way, and focuses –

And yes.

He stands at attention, hands folded behind his back, and Astrid and Eodwulf follow him in an instant.

Seconds later, the door from downstairs opens, and Lady Vysoren and Master Ikithon come through, Lady Vysoren practically radiating a combination of annoyance and exasperation and Master Ikithon still presenting his masked personality.

He gives a respectful nod to the adults in the room, gaze lingering over Zahra and Kashaw, before turning to them.

His eyes turn back to their usual coldness when he looks at them, and Bren tries to remain awake.

“- I trust that they were well behaved?” Ikithon finishes, and he blinks again, having missed the beginning of the conversation.

He misses whatever happens next, as well, and before he can move Astrid’s hand is in his on one side and Eodwulf’s is on the other side, and he takes a breath – and the world twists.

The ground forms against his feet a void away, and he barely catches the end portion of Ikithon’s instructions before he sends them inside, Astrid and Wulf practically leading him at this point.

They reach the room, and he sits on the edge of the bed, peeling off his boots and robes with exhaustion clouding every movement.

“- Bren, hey – I need to change the bandages,” Astrid is saying, and he just blinks again.

Everything feels off-kilter, almost, like he blinked too hard and everything was shifted slightly to the left.

Eodwulf’s hand laces through the short strands of his hair, though, and he relaxes against him.

It used to be longer – Eodwulf’s hair was longer then too, before they had come here and shorn it off for its potential to be used against them in a fight.

Astrid takes off the bandages with steady hands and traces light fingers over the healing gashes in his arms that will soon scar to match the ones on her own, to match the ones on Wulf’s. She smears cream over them and rewraps them, finally finishing and dropping them down to his lap.

He’s just barely aware of Astrid and Eodwulf talking over his head, but after the bandages are finished he leans against Wulf and sinks into the mattress, and in an instant he is asleep, darkness chasing away the soft torchlight of the room.

There will be things to do when he wakes, training to be done, reports to write, a graduation test to prepare for, but for right now he’s asleep between his best friends, and that is enough.


	2. Letters, Responses, and Scarves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura Vysoren, once upon a time, banished an ancient dragon to the elemental plane of fire.
> 
> She was an adventurer, once, and like many adventurer's do, fell headfirst into being friends with one Yussah Errenis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few points of order (eyes emoji)
> 
> this fic takes place before the last chapter of Black Currant, which i might edit to reflect the Xhorhouse because i desperately want to let the m9 have their amazing house.
> 
> next chapter is (sadly) not written yet, but look out for that in a couple days!
> 
> enjoy :)

 

_My dear friend,_

_Yussah, I apologize for having lapsed in our communication these past few weeks. I had, once again, the unfortunate pleasure of hosting the yearly talk between the Cerberus Assembly and the Arcana Pansophical, to the effect that I was once again forced to carry on a conversation with Archmage Ikithon that seems to have robbed me of my remaining patience._

_Ikithon is a man, terribly smart in the worst sort of way, and someone who’s attitude is so entirely self-centered and annoying that I question his ability to function within society, let alone have risen to the position of Archmage. He spent six hours in my office, explaining some random device that they had dug up from the Ashkeeper Peaks and completely derailing any attempts that I made to focus on necromantic activity within the Empire. I dread his return next year, as I have been informed by the Assembly that he is to be their de-facto representative in the coming years._

_But, fluff aside, he was annoying and I am glad to be rid of him for the time being. Not malicious, I do not believe, but I do question the motives of the Assembly in choosing this man to have power over anything. And – he brought students with him to Emon! Apparently he has been training them at his own home, and had no choice other than to bring them. I had to beg Gilmore to watch them, on a day that Keyleth and Zahra and Kashaw were visiting, no less, and he told me that the students were abnormally quiet, polite to a fault, and had evidence of unhealed injuries  - and one of them, Bren, was exhausted to the point of nearly passing out in his lunch plate. Ikithon cannot be a good teacher. Arcane ability is a matter best cultivated in highly controlled environments, not whatever crud Ikithon’s coming up with in his house. I plan on informing the Assembly of their slight to the students of the academy, and to hopefully ensure that those students receive remedial instruction that is away from what is most likely a less than optimal learning environment under Ikithon._

_My own problems aside, I hope that you and Wentworth have been well. If you are amenable, Percival has expressed interest in having you come visit for Winter’s Crest at Whitestone. He has also informed me that he finished the puzzle box that you sent him, and the he has sent some device to you that should be arriving within the next week from Deastock._

_Your friend,_

_Allura Vysoren_

_My dearest Allura,_

_My dear, I thank you for writing. Please inform Percival that I congratulate him on his success, and that he should expect another package within the next day or so. Additionally, Wentworth and I would be delighted to join you for Winter’s Crest._

_I have heard little of Ikithon, to tell you the truth. I know that he is the Archmage of Civil Influence, and may be more than the mask that he presents, although I do not know the depths of that mask. While it is strange that he deemed it suitable to bring students with him on a diplomatic trip, it was probably a better option than leaving them to their own devices. We both know exactly how – rowdy, for lack of a better term, unmonitored arcane proteges can become. If you believe that Ikithon is not a suitable teacher, I would recommend speaking to the Assembly, as it seems you plan to. It is most likely a case of a man who took on too much with too little experience._

_I wish you the best of luck in dealing with him in the future._

_Your friend,_

_Yussah Errenis_

_My dear friend,_

_I believe that Wentworth accidentally left one of his cravats at the castle over the holiday. It is en route to Nicodranas._

_I just had, once again, the unfortunate pleasure of having my second meeting with Archmage Ikithon. He was nearly the same as last year, and I feel as though I have learned nothing that I did not already know._

_His incompetence in these meetings aside, he did find fit to inform me that the students he had brought with him last year are no longer part of the Academy, and that they, in fact, fell victim to a blast of arcane force in their graduation exam and perished. This account has been corroborated by my other correspondents within the Assembly. I have made a full report, currently being filed, that recommends that Ikithon is no longer allowed to have contact with students, seeing as he cannot keep them safe._

_I did not know his students well. They were only in my company for a few moments, and in Gilmore and the other’s company for only a few hours, though they still remember and ask after them, sometimes._

_It is always tragic, to lose students that young. We – you and I, Gilmore, my adventuring friends – are not unaccustomed to loss, but it is still hard to see people go so young._

_If you are free, I would greatly appreciate your presence at dinner tonight. Kima will be home, and she has missed you, though she will not say it out loud._

_Your friend,_

_Allura Vysoren_

_My dearest Allura,_

_Y_ _oung lives lost are always tragic. I am sorry that Ikithon’s neglect has caused this._

_I have put out feelers within my own network in the Empire, and if they bring me any information concerning Ikithon or his students I will be sure to inform you. This letter is going to be fairly redundant, as I will join you for dinner in a matter of hours, but I wish you a good day until I arrive._

_If there is some wrongdoing at foot, I am sure that you will root it out._

_Your friend,_

_Yussah Errenis_

_My dear friend,_

_Yussah, I cannot believe how long I have been forced to deal with this man. Today marks the last time, however, as Ikithon has informed me that, due to the escalation of the war between Xhorhas and the Empire, he is needed elsewhere and the diplomatic meetings must pause for a time._

_I won’t lie and say that I am not relieved. The good that these meetings are supposed to do, to keep in check necromancy and mind magics, seems to have fallen to the wayside these years in favor of Ikithon’s fluff and drivel. While I did succeed in removing him from a teaching role, all those years ago, nothing else untoward has come forward regarding his character and so I have sat through these useless meetings with him, his voice an ever present annoyance in my ears._

_I worry, slightly, of the war between the Empire and the Dynasty. There are a lot of innocent lives at stake here, and very little public knowledge as to the basis of the war. If you know anything –_

_But please stay safe, my friend. You have lived far too long to fall to a simple war._

_Your friend,_

_Allura Vysoren_

_My dearest Allura,_

_The most curious thing has conspired, as of late. As you well know, I have a soft spot for adventurers, and I have recently made my acquaintance with a new group that seem to be growing in recognition across all of Wildemount. The Mighty Nein, they call themselves – a motley crew, possibly even more colorful than Vox Machina in their heyday. They came to me seeking – well, seeking many things, the least of which they understood. They had with them a puzzle mechanism that triggers an entrance into a demi-plane, a device that I have written already of to Taryon to try and piece together its functioning. I, personally, believe it may be an artifact from the age of arcana, and have taken custody of it for the time being. Additionally, the party also had with them another artifact, one that I did not recognize. It seemed to possess aspects of both arcane, elemental, and divine power, twisted together to create something entirely new. They took that one with them. A curious group, all together._

_But my connection to these newly rising adventurers is not the purpose of this letter. The wizard, in their party, is someone that I am – concerned about. I brought him up to the teleportation circle, so that he could study and use it as an escape route in the future. I had previously just thought him shy – he had not spoken much, while his friends did, and I attempted to give him some advice, while he studied the circle._

_His reaction to my advice, to me, to the situation – it was not one of shyness, or even one of social anxiety – it was a reaction of fear, deeply ingrained. Someone in his past, most likely a teacher, abused that man’s trust and abilities._

_I doubt that you will be able to assist me in this matter, with the little connection that you have to the Empire beyond the Assembly. But if you have heard tell of an arcanist named Caleb Widogast, I would be greatly inclined to find out the name of his teacher, so that I can –_

_Well._

_You are aware of my opinions on this sort of matter. If this connection between myself and this party continues to grow, you may wish to meet them some day. They remind me dearly of you, when you were younger, and of your friends._

_Also, there is finally a real candy shop in town. Old Faber has retired, and left his shop to a pair of Empire immigrants that are extremely talented with molten sugar. I have sent a package of lemon candies to Emon. Wentworth loves them dearly, and I hope that you enjoy them._

_You friend,_

_Yussah Errenis_

_My dear friend,_

_I have not heard of any mage named Caleb Widogast, although the last name does remind me of a language present within the Empire. He may be from the area of the Zemni fields – I would advise starting there, if you seriously plan on looking into his past._

_If you need any assistance rooting out people who would abuse their powers over others, you have whatever strength I can gather._

_In lighter news, I have recently taken up knitting. Expect a series of shoddily made scarves to be making their way to your location._

_Your friend,_

_Allura Vysoren_

_My dearest Allura,_

_The war here continues to tread its path. I worry, slightly, that it may come closer to the coast then I am entirely comfortable with. Mercenaries hired out by the Empire are already present in the city in droves, these days, and the city, while uninvolved officially, is growing tenser with each passing day. Taryon informed me that his drow companion, as well, was called back to Rosohna out of fear for their safety in the Empire… This war may be growing larger than I had originally assumed it to be. Have you any information from the Pansophical side of things? As always, you are not obligated to share anything with me, but any information I can gather is more information I can use to protect this city._

_And thank you for the scarves. While I rarely leave my tower for long enough for the cold to eat away at me, Wentworth has taken to wearing them while answering the door. He sends along his thanks._

_Your friend,_

_Yussah Errenis_

_My dear friend,_

_The war does seem to be progressing, in a manner that I find – confusing, if not outright alarming. I am still unaware of the intricacies and reasons behind this conflict, beyond just what I have heard regarding a suspected item theft within Zadash, a few months ago. But just that attack alone seems like scant reason to start a war. I fear, personally, that there is some larger conflict at root here, one overlaid with the hustle of the war effort. The Empire has always been one for a rather violent method of increasing its borders, and I do not doubt that they wish to acquire Xhorhas as a result of this, although the reasoning behind that is lost to me. The land itself is so foreign from anything within the empire’s borders, that any colonization attempts would be met with a swift death from culture shock. Even disregarding the beasts of the wastes, the pure presence of that many drow and so called ‘beast folk’ living in relative harmony is not something that the Empire would tolerate. With all that at play – I simply don’t understand, old friend._

_I fear for the innocents at stake in this conflict, Yussah._

_Planerider Ryn has approached me of late, additionally, with her concerns regarding the eruption of rifts within some of the layers of the abyssal plane. She is – much, much older than I am, and I trust her judgement in this matter, which makes me concerned how worried she appears to be._

_Something is afoot, something that we aren’t seeing yet._

_Please, friend – if this war reaches the Coast – stay safe._

_I do not ever want to see you hurt._

_Your friend,_

_Allura Vysoren_

_My dearest Allura,_

_The war grows closer with every day, though it is not yet nipping on my heels._

_Those adventurers I had mentioned before returned a few weeks ago, another person in tow, fresh from Xhorhas, it seems, though I know not how they survived their time in that country. I do not know if they intend to stay, though they have yet to leave._

_If you would like to visit, and ignore this war for a few hours at least, I was planning on visiting that candy shop in person in a few weeks – if these adventurer’s remain in the city until then, perhaps you may meet them, if you would do me the pleasure of coming to visit._

_My circle, as always, welcomes your stately presence._

_Your friend,_

_Yussah Errenis_

_My dear friend,_

_I would love to come visit, but please never phrase it like that again. Really._

_You made Kima spit tea all over the back of my robes as she read this over my shoulder, and I do not entirely wish to repeat the experience._

_I will see you soon, friend._

_Your friend,_

_Allura Vysoren_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, im writing this fic exclusively for myself and like two other people but im glad other people read this series and enjoy this! just keep that in mind while thinking about the... plausibility of the plot, character choices, or ... pretty much anything else.
> 
> other than the candymaking! while not described yet, im very confident in my knowledge of candymaking procedures.
> 
> also im finally starting my Actual Serious His Dark Materials au that's averaging 9k a chapter and has, gasp, plot, character development, and intricately developed lore. look out for that first chapter to come along next week. that one is a work of love, and I'm excited to be able to start publishing it soon.


	3. No rest for the Non-Wicked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is six in the morning, Allura's time, and she has been awake for twenty hours.
> 
> But it's fine. She's sure that the sugar from whatever place Yussah had seemed so fond of will wake her up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note! so, in the effort of fitting this into canon again, assume that whatever I said about time or the reason they were in Nicodranas in Black Currant is moot, and this is the situation: (Spoilers for up to episode 62)
> 
> \- They got the xhorhouse, but Jester didn't (yet) do the scry on the blonde guy and hear about the thing at the overcrow  
> \- They are in nicodranas to pick up Luke and take him back with them, and have been so for two weeks while waiting for Shakaste to take Luke from Alfeild to the city  
> \- astrid and eodwulf don't yet know about the Xhorhas situation
> 
> is this consistent with black currant? maybe not. am i having fun writing this? you bet.

When she steps through the teleportation circle that she had inscribed onto the tiles of her basement, she steps into relative darkness, a room with no windows, no light, and no one to welcome her.

Not out of the ordinary, for this location, but if she waits just a moment –

The rune above her flickers into a brilliant blue light as a door set into the wall swings open, Wentworth standing there, crossbow pointed at her that falls back to his side when he sees her face.

“Hello, Wentworth. Is Yussah home?”

The goblin blinked at her, gold eyes greenish in the blue light of the room, and pocketed the crossbow, folding his hands across his chest. His stance, while still standoffish, softened, and he spares her a small smile.

“Lady Vysoren – of course, he’s just downstairs. Did you inform him that you were arriving today?”

She laughs, muffling it behind one hand, and follows him down the winding staircase, robes brushing the stone’s as they make their way downwards.

“Not as such, Wentworth. I thought that I would make it a surprise.”

When they leave the staircase, she finds herself in the nicer sitting room, the one that Yussah uses for himself and Wentworth. Not the one he reserves for meeting foreign officials – that would be the parlor, that has white tiles, white walls, and altogether too much gilding on the picture frames and windows and display cases alike. Also not the lesser sitting room that he uses for adventurers, where the couches are just on the edge of being worn and nothing is irreplaceable. This sitting room, in contrast, has a set of couches bedecked with pillows and blankets and a small mound of plush creations in the corner, that she knows Wentworth has been working in his free time, in addition to the thin gauzy curtains lining the windows, the shelves full of books, knick-knacks, and artifacts that he’s collected over the years, and Wentworth’s sewing machine in the corner, currently recessed into the desk it lives in.

Yussah isn’t facing the stairway door when they come in, and doesn’t turn around when he (presumably) hears them coming through.

“Wentworth, what is the meaning of –“ he says, and twists around in the chair, his hair mussed from sleep and a pillow crease still present on his right cheek.

She beams at him, and has the pleasure of watching his eyes widen, then narrow, and then close completely as he pinches his nose with one hand and frantically smooths down his hair with the other.

“Hello, friend.”

He sighs, and begrudgingly smiles back.

“Allura, dear. How nice of you to visit, at eight in the morning, without _warning me first –_ “

She laughs, again, and sits herself down on the couch opposite him, folding her legs underneath her.

“I did say soon, didn’t I?” She twists her nose and readjusts her position, pulling her legs up onto the couch and leaning against the mountain of pillows on one side.

“Maybe I didn’t want to wait weeks to visit that candy shop. Maybe – and this is just a theory, don’t quote me on this – I wanted to come visit my dear old friend Yussah, whom I have not seen for a number of weeks because he has been avoiding leaving his emerald tower –“

Yussah’s face grows more disgruntled as she keeps talking, and finally cuts her off, eyes narrowed.

“I was not avoiding you – hmph.” He stops, and tilts his head to the side slightly.

“… Possibly I was avoiding leaving the tower.”

She just grins, knowingly, and takes in Yussah’s sigh with amusement.

“Get dressed, old friend. I want to see that candy shop that’s enraptured your affections.”

She, of course, has been awake for hours at this point. It’s two in the morning, back in Emon, and she has been awake since ten in the morning yesterday. Normally, she would be asleep right now, but all of her attempts at rest had been foiled by nightmares and a restlessness biting into her bones, and her friends had been busy, and Kima had been in Vasselheim, and so at the grand hour of one thirty three in the morning she had made the executive decision to go bother Yussah.

He, of course, is not actually bothered. She’s done this before.

But, she notes with some chagrin, inwardly directed, it is rather early for her fellow mage to be awake.

And the store probably doesn’t open for another few hours, at least.

Whoops.

 

* * *

 

 

It is seven thirty three in the morning with Caleb wakes up, back sore from sleeping on the living room couch at the shop, Eodwulf’s head pillowed on his lap and Astrid’s leaning against his legs.

They had fallen asleep in the living room last night after a long hour of stories that they had missed, and a long night of wine that Jester had gifted them that’s most likely the contributor to the raging headache he can feel bouncing against the back of his eyeballs.

He clicks his fingers, and Frumpkin flickers into being on Eodwulf’s lap, the man turning slightly and slipping off his own.

He gently moves Astrid so that she’s resting against the back of the couch before moving into the kitchen, bare feet padding lightly against the cooler tiles and wood of the floors.

While he’s no great cook – that honor belonging mostly to Caduceus, and to Eodwulf in the past, although he doesn’t know now if Astrid’s cooking skills have improved alongside her sugar work – he can at least fry meats and make eggs, and he does so, the scent and sounds of butter frying slowly rousing his two friends.

They both wake slowly – he peeks behind him, at some points, and witnesses Eodwulf petting Frumpkin with a look of sleepy confusion on his face, and Astrid waking up with a jolt and nearly falling over before Eodwulf pats her on the head and she relaxes.

Breakfast is a relaxed affair, as all three of them have a headache from the night before that subsides slowly over the food he has prepared. Astrid and Wulf have to set up the shop for the day, but as they told him – repeatedly, those first few days, because he hadn’t believed them – he’s welcome to stay in the back and read and that’s what he does, setting up shop for himself on the couch with his papers, ink, and spell book sprawled across the coffee table. They’ve been in Nicodranas for two weeks now, waiting for Luke to arrive with Shakaste, and he needs to keep his spells accurate for whatever happens next.

He is not sure whether they are going back to Xhorhas – most likely, he guesses, because that is their best chance of ending this war, and he wants just as much as his friends to be able to return to their house, tree and all – but it is precarious.

He has just found them, is the thing. He doesn’t want to leave them here, not Astrid and Eodwulf, people that the empire could find and recognize and use, hurt and torture again –

His pen creaks under the weight of his clenched fist, and he relaxes his fingers, blinking at the ink splotch that’s formed under his hand.

Thoughts for later, when he summons up the courage to inform his two best friends that while they had built a life for themselves, away from Ikithon, he’s managed to fuck around and become an agent of the Krynn dynasty.

Hours pass like molasses as he transcribes spells, before eventually he blinks and the sunlight outside the back windows tell him that it’s lunchtime. He closes up his books and pets Frumpkin, half asleep in a patch of sunlight on the tiles, and summons his cat to scarf around his neck, scratching at the soft fur behind his ears. Frumpkin purrs, nuzzling into his neck, and he smiles.

When he wanders out into the front of the shop, Wulf is at the counter, handing over a wrapped package of sweets to a little human child, who grins up at him before skipping over to her father towards the door. They both wave, and then exit, the bells on the door clanging in their wake. Astrid is by the hook set against the wall, pulling at a wad of clear molten sugar that turns white the longer she works with it with mage hand, her real hands mixing coloring into a more liquid batch that shine with trapped air bubbles.

He takes a seat on the bench in the corner and watches them work, fondness bubbling at the back of his throat.

Wulf finishes sliding a handful of copper pieces into the lockbox and steps down from the stool that lets him see over the counter with a happy sigh, before grinning and sitting himself down next to Caleb on the bench.

“We’re going to close up for lunch in a little bit, I just need to finish this batch.” Astrid takes the two candy batches, one a shining gold and the other a pristine opaque white, and starts rolling them into logs, rolled up sleeves slipping down slightly as she works.

Eodwulf pokes him with one hand and he shifts over slightly, enough for the other man to pull his legs up and sit cross-legged on the bench.

Astrid, after rolling the two colors into long rods, turns her head to grin at them and then recasts mage hand. With the help of the third hand, she maneuvers the rods into the machine in the back (commissioned from a tinkerer in Deastock, she had told him with excitement coloring her words two days ago) that has two cylinders of brass with inlaid stars pressed close to each other. As she feeds the candy into the machine, her mage hand turns the cylinders, and he and Wulf watch as both candies come into the machine as flat rods and come out star-shaped, connected by thin breakaway segments.

Wulf stands up again, and helps Astrid move the rolled out candy to the table in the back, and together the two of them lift the sheets into the air and drop them, star candy scattering on the table as the bits connecting each piece break on impact.

A few minutes later, Astrid brushes a stray piece of colored sugar off her cheek and wipes her hands on her apron, and the two of them start to bustle around, closing up the shop for lunchtime.

He’s in the back getting ready to leave, his coat and holster’s back on, when the bells chime once again at the front door and he hears Eodwulf’s voice, muffled through the wall to the shop –“Hey, sorry but we’re closing for – Oh!”

He pats down his books and heads back out into the shop, stopping in the doorway as he sees just exactly who’s entered.

Because – that, unless it’s someone is disguise which would be ludicrous because who would disguise themselves as someone so conspicuous, shut up – is Yussah Errenis, the same mage whose teleportation circle they have been using for their own benefit.

The mage’s eyes flick over to him and widen for a moment before smoothing back out, his face still impassive.

“Mr. Widogast.” He inclines his head towards him, and from his position in the doorway he watches as Astrid and Eodwulf both stiffen, tension writing itself in the lines of their bodies.

He nods back, and Yussah spares him a small smile. “And a pleasure to see you two again, as well. If it’s not too much of a bother, could I make a purchase before you go to lunch?” He nods at the door, and Caleb watches as an older human woman steps through, greying hair swept up into a loose bun, dark blue robes scraping the floor by her feet.

“My friend here is visiting the city, and has yet to try most of your candy.”

She looks familiar, but not in a way that he can place.

He steps forward, out of the doorway, and makes his way to the counter, stopping next to Eodwulf and pressing the back of his fingers against the other’s closed fist.

“It’s alright,” he whispers, and laces his fingers with Wulf’s.

Astrid, after glancing at the two of them, taking in his (relatively) relaxed stance and his hand in Wulf’s, nods, and looks back towards the two visitors.

“What can I get you, Yussah and – what can I get you, ma’am?” She plasters a smile on her face, and stops fingering the symbol of the Archeart tied around her throat.

The woman smiles, and bows her head a bit before standing straight. “Allura Vysoren, a pleasure. If you have any citrus ones, I’d take those.”

His grip on Wulf’s hand tightens when the woman introduces herself, and his breath quickens in his throat.

Eodwulf glances at him, and then back at Astrid, who’s reached a hand back up to compulsively clasp her necklace, and then back at Yussah, who at this point is staring at them all with a look of confusion – and then, as Astrid continues to just stare at Lady Vysoren, a look of dawning comprehension.

Allura’s face falls, just slightly, as the silence continues and glances at the three of them.

“Is – is everything alright?”

Yussah lays a hand on her shoulder, and murmurs, “Allura –“

He looks back to the three of them – Astrid, standing stock still with her hand clasped around her holy symbol, Eodwulf, clutching Caleb’s hand hard enough to hurt, and himself, meeting Yussah’s gaze but still fingering the component pouch at his waist – and squeezes Allura’s shoulder.

“Astrid, Eodwulf – and Mr. Widogast – I would like for you to meet Lady Allura Vysoren, current head of the Arcana Pansophical, although I do surmise from this encounter that you have met in the past.”

As Yussah say’s their names – Astrid and Wulf’s more than his, because his is a fake that she should have no knowledge of, unless she’s brokering favor with the Bright Queen in Emon – her face blanks, and then darkens, a thousand flashes of emotion crossing her eyes.

“Ah.”

She blinks, and smooths out a panel on the front of her robes, fingers trailing along the intricate embroidery placed there.

“Right.” She looks to the ceiling, and the sides of her mouth tilt downwards as she frowns, brow furrowed.

She looks back at them, and then at Yussah, and then back at them, gaze intense as she takes in the details of their clothing, their appearances, the thickly laid scars still visible on Astrid’s arms where her shirt sleeves are rolled up.

He watches as Allura makes calculations in her head, the silence stretching.

“You are not dead.” She says, and laughs to herself darkly.

“That man – I’m going to have his hide for this.”

Caleb can feel his own eyes widen, can feel Eodwulf’s hand tighten again in his own, can see Astrid’s hand release from her holy symbol and drop back to her side.

Yussah clasps his hands together, and watches all of them.

“I think,” he starts, “that there is a conversation, to be had here.”

Allura snorts, inelegantly, and nods.

“A conversation, at the very least. A witness account at best –“ and her eyes brighten and fixate on the three of them, a hand taking out a notebook from the depths of her robes and then a pen in quick order, “- because I’ve been trying to pin down Ikithon for 15 years and if you have information – and, gods, you must because he seems to have faked news of your deaths –“

She laughs, again, and grins, a little too widely, showing her teeth.

“Yussah, we may have a quest, dear.”

Yussah – Yussah Errenis, the mage that he knows nearly nothing about other than that he is fond of tea and his goblin, fond to adventurers that he has just met and those who treat him with respect – smiles, slowly, and places a hand on Allura’s arm.

“If you would be willing, of course.” He nods at the three of them, and Caleb lets go of Eodwulf’s hand in favor of snapping Frumpkin into existence and winding him around his neck as a scarf.

He nods when Astrid’s eyes look to his face, and then nods again when she raises an eyebrow.

She shrugs at his nod, and looks towards Yussah and Allura, both of whom seem altogether too excited to be talking about how a mage was nearly the death of them.

She sighs.

“Might as well come in, then.”

He supposes that they are probably skipping lunch.

Oh well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this so fast. i love... astrid and eodwulf... and also allura a lot.
> 
> as usual, this fic may contain falsehoods, inconsistencies, and outright lies. however, all information regarding historical candymaking techniques is as accurate as i can make it, thanks to my obsession with watching lofty pursuits on youtube.


	4. Dancing through life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories, good and bad and horrible. A life to live.

Allura Vysoren, at this moment, is absolutely delighted. Because – if she can get Ikithon on this, tear down that pompous fool and root out the corruption that she theorizes lies within the bowels of the assembly, it will be an improvement for everyone, not just the Empire, but the Coast, for Xhorhas, for Tal’dorei, for Vasselheim, even.

* * *

 

Yussah Errenis, on the other hand, is wary. He can feel his companions excitement – it would be hard not to, with how she’s practically vibrating with the need to fix this, to end the annoyance that Ikithon has created in her life – but her mood does not match his own. He had – theorized, previously, about what abuses Mr. Widogast had previously suffered under whoever taught him magic. His responses, that first meeting in the Tidepeak – he had lied about being self-taught, that he had realized easily enough, but the reasons for that lie had become ever increasingly clear to him the longer that interaction had carried on. The skittishness, almost, of that man and his anxiety at being alone with him, his fear that he would be trapped in a deal he could not satisfy in order to secure the safety of himself and his friends – it had been palpable, in the teleportation room.

If – well. If Widogast is, in fact, the third counterpart of Ikithon’s dead student trio, then that may explain more than he wants to think about at this venture.

He’s known Astrid and Eodwulf for scarcely a few months, as previously Wentworth had been the one to get the candies – he hated leaving his tower, these days, a weakness he confesses to readily and has been working through, but all the same he’s only made their acquaintance recently.

They – if he’s thinking about it, reexamining his prior interactions with them in the context that they had been under Ikithon’s questionable tutelage, they too remind him of Widogast. Because – the startle responses. The bells on the door, the locks on the windows, the sigils and runic inscriptions of abjuration magics he can just spy peeking out of the rug in the entry way. It all paints a picture of people used to conflict, of people terrified of being found and attacked when they weren’t prepared, so alternatively they decided to always be prepared.

It is not an unfamiliar concept, to him. It’s been – many, many years since he himself was an adventurer, years in which his companions lived and died around him, but some things linger, malignant and hiding until the right thing draws them to the forefront and you suffer the consequences.

And this moment – this unwitting confrontation, confessional that Allura has constructed – may be one of those things that draw out that which lingers.

He hopes – he hopes he is wrong, and that the picture is he has in his mind is wrong.

Because if he isn’t –

Well.

He may have a government to fight, again.

 

* * *

 

She is not in favor of what’s happening, here. They couldn’t – they couldn’t exactly say no, to this, to the literal head of the Pansophical and to Yussah, but she wishes, now, that they could have postponed it at least. Given her and Eodwulf time to figure out what things to share and what things to hide, to give Caleb breathing space, to give all three of them more time to _live_ without having Ikithon’s presence constantly leering over their shoulders.

The three of them, her family, are seated on one of the threadbare couches in the back room, Wulf picking at the beading on a pillow they had picked up from a secondhand shop in the Open Quay and Caleb’s fingers are buried in Frumpkin’s fur.

Allura, across from her, clears her throat and leans forwards.

“Now – The second time I met with Ikithon, a year after the meeting in which he brought the three of you with him, he told me that all of you had perished in an arcane explosion during your graduation exams. Now, obviously, that was not the case, as all three of you are sitting here before me today. I’ve already reported Ikithon for suspicions of negligence, but all that investigation resulted in was the removal of him from a teaching role at the academy. If you have any information – any abuses of magic that he may have championed, any abuse you suffered under his care, and hurt he caused on you – anything you’re willing to share, it will aid my report and allow me to further attempt to remove him from a position of power.”

She pauses, and nods her head at Yussah.

“We would both like, very much, to see that man removed from power. It is my belief that his influence forms up the bulk of what’s driving this war, between the Empire and the Dynasty, and if we can tear out his corrupting influence at the root, this entire conflict may resolve itself for the better.”

Allura gestures to the window, and the storm shutters outside close, slowly and carefully locking themselves into place against the glass panes.

Caleb, next to her, taps his finger against his knee and she glances over. He looks – uncomfortable, certainly, but not panicking yet.

“ _Do we want – the truth, liebling? Or a modified version?”_ he asks in Zemnian, and she smiles faintly at the sound of their language before frowning again, focusing in on his words.

“ _The truth, I think. If they – and they can, Lady Vysoren at least has that power, to tear down Ikithon, then I think the truth is worth it. Wulf, what do you –“_

Eodwulf nods, and his fingers clench around the edge of the pillow in lieu of biting his fingernails into his palm, knuckles now edging towards white.

“ _The truth. Maybe not – not all of it, but the parts that would ruin him.”_ He jerks his head at Allura, and she glances across the room to see both her and Yussah staring at them with a considering eye.

She directs her gaze back to Wulf, and then nods. Caleb, in the middle of them, sits up straighter, his fingers still entrenched in his familiar’s fur.

“We were – all three of us, students at the Soltryce Academy in Rexxentrum. A few months into our studying there, we were taken in, for lack of a better term, by Ikithon, and for the remainder of our schooling studied under him directly. He – ah.” He stops, and Astrid places a hand over his and squeezes, gently, picking up where he left off.

“He was training us to be – magic, obviously, but also torture and information gathering and killing. When you saw us, Lady Allura – that was in between a set of longer missions. He would have us take people that he said had betrayed the empire, traitors – he would have us figure out what they knew, what they had done, and then disposed of them afterwards. He was training us to be – _vollstreckers_ , scourgers, assassins.”

She nods at Eodwulf, and he picks up the thread, face tight. It’s easier like this, for all three of them to share the load, then it would be for any one of them to tell this story.

Wulf stares Allura in the eyes. “He would experiment on us. Insert crystals under the skin of our arms, to try and strengthen us, and then when that didn’t work he turned to more mundane means, to try and manipulate us into doing his bidding. But after that, as well, didn’t produce the results he wanted –“ He stops, voice cutting off, and Caleb grabs his hand as well.

“The Pansophical, they track and govern use of mind magic, yes?” Caleb’s voice is deeper than normal, like he’s tearing the words out from somewhere deeper within him.

Allura nods, and Yussah’s gaze sharpens.

Caleb’s fingers rap out a melody under her hand.

“Since the beginning of our training with him – he is an enchantment specialist. And he used that to his continual advantage. If there was – anything that he didn’t want us to see, to know, any doubts that we had, anything that he did to us that could not be instantly healed, any adverse effects of his torture and experiments and lies – he would erase our own memories and construct new ones. Suggest us, order us to do things, to kill –“ her friend’s voice grows quieter as he presses on, and then dwindles into silence as he heaves a breath, oxygen stuttering in his lungs.

She looks at his face, and his eyes are distant, locked in some memory that’s torn itself to the front of his mind, but as she watches, about to pull him upstairs, away from this, Frumpkin stretches in his lap and then stands on his hind legs and licks under Caleb’s chin.

He blinks, and then the horrible emptiness in his eyes fades as he blinks again and sinks back into the cushions, Frumpkin settling back in his lap. He squeezes her hand back.

“ _Do you want me and Wulf to – we can tell them, if you need to check out.”_

He nods, faintly, and she squeezes his hand back before letting him bury his fingers in Frumpkin’s fur and block out of the conversation.

When she looks back out across the couch, Yussah is staring at them in concern, Allura’s face almost a mirror of his own.

Eodwulf taps her hand, and she lets him take up the next thread of the situation.

“After he had brought us to the meeting with you, Lady Vysoren, we had a few weeks – a month, maybe two. It’s a little blurry. But we were – we were given leave to go home. That leave, it turns out, was our graduation exam. He planted memories in our minds of our parents talking about – rebellion, evidence that they had been traitors to the empire. And he had us kill them.”

Wulf’s voice is almost emotionless, edging towards apathy, but he gets the words out.

She shakes her head and keeps on talking. “Bren – he goes by Caleb now, but the combination of the planted memories breaking and the trauma of the situation, of the past few years, and he – Ikithon told us that he had killed him, for being weak, but he had lied to us. He was locked away, for years and years until he escaped, and we only just reunited a few weeks ago. But for us – that night, we pushed through the false memories, and I managed to planeshift us to the feywild. When we got back to this plane, we were here, on the Coast, and it was ten years later but we were away from them.”

She stops, sinking against the couch cushions. Eodwulf’s arm reaches out behind Caleb’s back and laces through the shorter edges of her hair, and she relaxes into that contact.

Allura’s face is almost slack, when she looks at her and Yussah.

Where she looks – dumbstruck, almost, Yussah looks enraged.

It’s not directed at her, or Wulf, or Caleb, who’s humming almost inaudibly next to her.

She recognizes the tune – a folk song from their childhood, one they had heard at market days and Elvendawns and holidays alike – but she recognizes what he’s doing, as well, a last ditch effort to calm himself down before he sinks into the self-hatred and over stimulation he would experience even before Ikithon got ahold of their psyches.

Yussah and Allura, while not as well tuned to her friend’s tells as she is, are obviously able to read the room.

“This is – I’m sorry, that you experienced that, and that no one had enough care to see what was happening, that I didn’t act on mine and Gilmore’s suspicions when you visited Emon. Thank you for – for sharing. This is more than enough for me to – well.” Her gaze turns fierce, sharper than before.

“I will work with the Pansophical to see him removed from power, and further investigate the corruption surrounding him within the assembly. I – I’m sorry, I truly am.”

She glances at Yussah, seemingly at a loss for words.

“We will let you be. Thank you for this.” He nods at them, and they both stand up.

She exchanges a look with Eodwulf, and he stands, leading them out of the backroom and then through the front door as she hears the distant tinkling of bells. After a moment’s pause, she can feel the flare of magic as her husband activates the wards.

She tucks her feet up onto the couch and kneels next to Caleb, hands taking his and tangling his fingers with her own.

“Caleb. Are you alright? Do you want me to call Nott, or Caduceus, or Beauregard –“

He shakes his head, the humming stopping for a moment before starting again – but this time less frantic, slower, more in tune.

It’s a different song this time, one that she recognizes as the piano piece he had been learning to play during music lessons, those first few brilliant months at the Academy.

He squeezes her hands back, and then stands up, Frumpkin slipping off his lap and curling in the corner of the couch. She stands with her, and then with a fast motion he’s tugging her around the room in a mock waltz, the humming constant and all wrong for this type of dance and delightful, all the same. She barks a laugh, worry and memories slipping away, and as Eodwulf enters the room again she grins at him, bright and brilliant, and he joins them. It’s messy and barely dancing at all, just the three of them twirling in circles around the couches and table, a few conjured dancing lights twirling along with them and her own humming magnified with a half-cast thaumaturgy, but in this moment, she wouldn’t be anywhere else.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the longer wait for this one! got caught up in umbra/daemon au.
> 
> next chapter up thursday or friday!
> 
> thank you people on discord who put up with me talking about my own fics all the time... yall are the real mvps


	5. It's familiar; But not too familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allies, lunch, assumptions, and baths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i say thursday? obviously i meant wednesday.
> 
> enjoy!

Yussah and Allura make the walk back to his tower in silence, broken only by the tapping of their respective heels against cobblestones and Wentworth’s greeting as he swings the door open.

His goblin friend disappears upstairs to grab tea and lunch, feet pattering against the stairs, and he and Allura collapse into the couches of his private sitting room. With a snap of his fingers, he summons a blanket to cover Allura’s shoulders and a stack of parchment, inks, and a quill for himself.

He spreads the papers out on the low table in front of him, dips the quill, and hovers his hand above the paper.

With a quick scrawl, he writes out a list in Elvish. People who owe him favors, within the Empire and the Assembly, contacts that he’s cultivated within magical communities in Zadash, in Deastock, in Rexxentrum – contacts that he still has tenuous connections to in Xhorhas, Essek in Roshona and others he has known within Xhorhas. While the country may be at war, hopefully, his connections will work within that context.

Allura, across from him, clenches her fist and stares at him while he scrawls out the list of names. With a wave of his hand, he sends it to her, and starts writing out another list of the best people to contact to take Ikithon’s position within the Assembly once he’s been removed.

“Gods, Yussah.”

He looks up, and Allura has the paper in her hands but isn’t looking at it, her eyes transfixed on some point behind him.

“That wasn’t – that wasn’t even the whole story. They were holding back. But – how did I miss that?” She meets his eyes, and the alarm inside of him grows at the tears glimmering at the corners of her eyes.

“Ikithon is a man that masks everything, his self included. He didn’t want you to see beyond a group of students who were tired but well. He hid it, purposefully.”

She wipes a hand over her eyes, and sighs.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I should have noticed. I should have – I thought something may have been wrong, and I didn’t do anything about it, and I left those kids to suffer. I don’t – “

He blows carefully at the paper he’s finished inking, and puts that one to the side, pulling another piece towards him.

“People are fallible, Allura. Maybe you made an error.” He glances up, and meets her eyes. “But I know you, friend. And I know that we are going to right some of those wrongs.”

His friend tucks a piece of blonde hair behind one ear, and sighs, sinking against the couch cushions.

“Can you procure a pen for me? I need to send some letters to other Pansophical members, if we are taking Ikithon down. And, do you think – backup?”

He considers that thought, for a second – what power Ikithon has at his disposal, after this many years of arcane study, and their chances of facing him if he turned violent alone.

“Backup may be wise. I would suggest – Pike, maybe, with Grog for the intimidation factor.”

Allura snorts, and nods. “If we bring Grog, we better hope it turns violent. He would be moping for days if we brought him along to conflict and he didn’t get to hit anything.”

He stifles a laugh in the sleeve of his robe. “That is – a fair point. Perhaps Pike and Keyleth? If she isn’t too busy.”

Allura’s face turns towards thoughtfulness, and after a few moments she nods.

“Threatening Ikithon with a dragon should he – misbehave, sounds apt.”

He laughs unrestricted at that, startling Wentworth who’s just now come into the room, a tea set hovering on an enchanted tray behind him and a set of sandwiches on the platter he’s holding.

He smiles at his smaller friend, and after a moment Wentworth smiles back.

He floats a teacup over to him and takes a long sip, before setting it down on the table.

“I believe I have an apt replacement in mind, for his position, and the Assembly, while needing a – cleaning, an investigation to root out further corruption, should not instantaneously collapse without him.”

The tea is good. His butler-roommate-partner-friend is very good at making it.

Though it seems that this is the last of the blend that Caduceus had brought him upon the group’s arrival to Nicodranas, a few weeks ago. Pity.

He’ll have to ask for more when he brings them news of Ikithon’s imminent fall from grace.

 

 

After the three of them – halfway to exhausted from swirling around the room to Caleb’s humming and Astrid’s thaumaturgy – have collapsed on the ragged carpet of the living room, breathing hard and still holding hands, there’s a ping at the wards, in the back of all their minds.

Eodwulf had keyed Caleb in within the first five days, because they trust him, implicitly and explicitly.

It’s not a warning ping, not the ‘oh shit somebody’s trying to break in’ ping, not the ‘lawbearer temple acolytes on a donation drive again’ ping, not the ‘nosy next door neighbors need some Fucking Sugar AGAIN’ ping. Just the normal ping, that somebody was knocking on the front door – knocking, it seems, with enough force to faintly rattle the bells.

Eodwulf extricates himself from the pile and heads towards the door, hands lazily tucking a few flyaway strands back into his braid as he steps past the counter and towards the door. The wards automatically darken all the windows, to make the store look unoccupied, but he can still barely see through them – easier for him than for Astrid and Caleb, with their – look, he’s not saying that they need glasses, because he knows they don’t think they do, but they kind of do.

What – whatever.

The point is, he can see through the door, and he can see the stationary form of a cobalt soul monk – Beau, he recognizes, standing with a smaller hooded figure and a woman with vibrant blue hair, bouncing on the balls of her feet, that he assumes is Jester in disguise.

He unlocks the doors, taking down the wards partially, and as he opens the door he’s greeted with a wall of noise, Jester’s excited bubbly voice mixing with Nott’s scratchier one and Beauregard’s subdued “Sup.”

He waves, awkwardly, and the three come into the shop.

Nott points a finger at him and scowls. “What are you – where’s Caleb? Did you kill him? Did you – are you evil again? You were supposed to be at the Chateau an hour ago, you fucking missed lunch entirely –“

Beauregard places a hand over Nott’s mouth and just sighs.

“Nott, cool it.” She nods at him. “Hey, Eodwulf. Everything okay? We didn’t want to like, sound the alarm or anything, but you guys did miss lunch.”

She takes in his – general state of disarray, his apron smudged with powdered sugar along one edge and off-kilter, his shirt cuffs buttoned wrong, his hair falling out of its braid, and her nose wrinkles along with her eyes.

Jester sees Beauregard, looking at him, and then stares at him.

Slowly, her eyebrows start to waggle.

He can literally feel the blush sweeping across his face, and he closes his eyes tightly, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he opens them, Nott’s eyes are wide with delight, and Beauregard and Jester both look like they’re about to start questioning him on the spot.

“Nope – nope nope nope nope nope,” he mutters, and turns on his heel and strides into the back room. He can hear them following him. It’s fine.

In the living room, Caleb’s managed to tuck his hair back in its low bun and is scratching Frumpkin behind his ears, Astrid draped upside down across the back of the couch, eyes narrowing when he comes in, before widening with realization as the rest of the crew follows in behind.

“Shit,” she says, still upside down, and slides off the back of the couch, falling in a heap on the floor.

She might have been trying to do a cool flip. Maybe.

She isn’t very good at those.

He gives her a thumbs up anyways.

“You guys missed lunch again, and it’s really sad because Caduceus made this mushroom thing and Fjord said that he thought it was gonna be gross but it was really good even though Yasha thought it would be better with some of that weird spider meat she eats –“

Beauregard, in a repeat of her earlier action, lays a hand over Jester’s mouth.

“I know we’ve only known you both for like two weeks but this is the third time you guys missed lunch with us and I think Caduceus is going to start taking it personally. Also, Caleb, you need to eat, dude.”

Caleb opens his mouth, voice starting and then stopping as Beau carries over him, “- and not just those stupid beads, actual food. C’mon.”

She claps her hands together.

“You guys can get back to canoodling, or what-the-fuck-ever you were doing in here, after lunch, and then after we go to the baths, liked we talked about yesterday. Okay?”

Caleb raises an eyebrow, and Beau just scowls at him.

She throws her hands into the hair, narrowly missing hitting Jester’s invisible horns. “What, you think I can’t be responsible? This is me, being responsible, and telling all three of you to go eat some food that’s not magic nourishment shit or candy – no offense, Astrid, Wulf, it’s pretty fucking great candy – and take a hot bath, and then get back to this. Whatever. Okay?”

Oh, he likes her.

Astrid coughs, and heaves herself off the floor. All three of them are still on the verge of being ready to go, from when they had originally been about to leave, before Allura and Yussah had arrived, and it only takes a handful of minutes for them to lock the shop back up and depart, Jester trotting ahead of the group, one hand clasping Beau’s and swinging wildly.

Nott walks next to him, and Astrid and Caleb take up the rear, conversing softly in Sylvan about the possibility of finding a piano in Nicodranas.

Gods, he loves them.

His face is making that fond look again, the one he sees in the mirror on the mornings he wakes up with Astrid’s hair poking into his mouth, the one he knows he makes when he sees Caleb scrunch up his nose while reading.

Nott pokes at him with one claw, and from beneath her hood and mask, he can just spot the edges of a toothy grin creeping up on her face.

“Were you guys dancing?”

He can feel the smile creeping across his face as he nods.

Nott sighs – not sadly, he doesn’t think. It sounds – relieved, almost.

“I think Jester and Beau thought you were – you know.” She makes – a hand gesture that he’s not going to describe, not even in his own thoughts.

“Having some of those rhino sex potions, if you know what I mean.”

He –

No, he doesn’t.

He keeps his gaze affixed on the back of Beauregard’s head, and tries to push down the blush that’s still burning across his cheekbones.

Nott chuckles, next to him, and then remains silent.

Behind him, Astrid and Caleb have moved past pianos to some debate, revisited from an argument he can remember at the Academy over whether allergies to animals can be activated by fey familiars.

“I’m telling you, _liebling_ , Fjord is allergic to Frumpkin –“

“He’s not – Frumpkin’s not actually a cat! He doesn’t have cat dust, or whatever it is that makes people allergic, he’s a – a fey being. Not a cat. Unless Fjord is just allergic to the Feywild –“

“No, it’s cats. He was practically wheezing when I tried to bring one into the dome when it was raining.”

He smiles, small and secure, and then ascends the steps into the Lavish Chateau.

Lunch is delicious in a way that it has no reason being, a meal made from mushrooms and roots and spices he doesn’t understand – “From Xhorhas,” Caduceus tells him.

It’s curious. He wonders, absentmindedly, where the firbolg attained these ingredients, how a country at war was still getting exports out.

Jester leads the, after lunch, to a bathhouse on the outer edge of the city. Not the fanciest place, not necessarily, but it’s a place where they can afford to have multiple private rooms. Nott begs out of the whole excursion, choosing to stay with her husband and Jester’s dog at the chateau, but the rest of the group joins them at the baths.

They are kind enough to get two private rooms, one for the Mighty Nein and then one for him and Astrid and then Caleb, who requests quietly to join them and is practically thrown over to their side.

He and Astrid haven’t been to a bathhouse in ages. For a while, they didn’t have the money to spare, and then they had been busy with the shop, and couldn’t – or, wouldn’t, more aptly, take the time to do something nice for themselves.

But baths are nice. Warm water, fancy soaps, brilliantly soft towels and rags and scents that he loves, with two of his favorite people in the world.

It’s wonderful. It’s brilliant. It’s –

Sad, a little bit, because here, without his overcoat and shirt sleeves and gloves, he can trace the familiar scars on Caleb’s arms, crisscrossed with unfamiliar ones, scars from the adventuring he’s been doing, scars that are old enough to have been caused by Ikithon but ones he doesn’t remember Caleb having.

They are all scarred, the three of them. Matching in some places, unmatched in others – he and Astrid don’t share the teeth marks along one calf Caleb sports from a night he had spent being chased by dogs under Ikithon’s direction during training, and Astrid and Caleb both lack the whip marks that line his own back, and he and Caleb lack the thicker scars that Astrid has on her left arm, from something she hasn’t told him about, something that he hadn’t asked about.

Matching, of course, are the neat lines from the crystals.

But he doesn’t – he wants to stop thinking about this.

The water is warm, and the air is cool in contrast.

The resulting splash fight that begins the instant they all get into the soap-free pool on the other side of the room makes the air seem practically freezing, compared to the hot water that he’s now had thrown into his face twice from different angles.

Ah, friends.

He loves them so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3
> 
> thanks for reading! next chapter tentatively scheduled for saturday night, but depending on how much i write friday, maybe then? who knows! i sure don't!
> 
> (also, hey. hey matt? telling us, three or four weeks in, that Essik is actually Essek Thelyss? terrible. I've had to edit so many scenes in umbra that arent even in chapters yet. matthew. please.)


	6. Murder Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ladies Night (Plus Grog): Murder Edition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is ... not a very serious chapter.  
> is this in character? maybe. Is this realistic? probably not. Do i care about either of those things? Not at all, because this is my fic, and i make the rules, and the rules here is that this is Cool.  
> warning: somebody dies in this chapter. It is not described graphically, and it is a death well deserved.

It is roughly four in the afternoon in Nicodranas, which means it’s roughly ten in the morning in Vasselheim, and Allura figures that that’s late enough to go intrude upon Pike. She’s already spent all morning locked in meetings with Gruude and Windkeeper Yurek in Syngorn, and had only stopped back at Yussah’s tower to grab her spare component bags before teleporting herself to Isyllria.

Vasselheim, as always, is beautiful, and charming, and one of her least favorite places in the world, just because of the oppressive lack of non-divine magic. It’s – she understands why arcane magic is frowned upon here. She really does. But that doesn’t stop her from hating it.

She really, really doesn’t understand how Scanlan can stand living here. She knows that most people look aside when he casts, here, with his whole hero status and all, but still –

She walks around, and doesn’t see any familiars, any socerors with wild magic remnants, any arcane devices – it’s disconcerting.

But that aside, she is used to being in this town, diplomatic duties and all.

The temple of Sarenrae that she makes her way to (on foot, slowly, because she can’t cast fly in this damn city -) is practically glowing in the light of the morning sun, and when she pushes her way through the carved doors the inside only holds a few people kneeling in prayer, and the tiny figure of Pike standing in the back of the room, discussing something with a woman that she recognizes as Lieve’tel.

She picks up her skirts so as not to make noise on the marble floors and tip toes her way past the worshippers to her friends. Pike glances up as she nears them, and brightens – literally, in some aspects, as the faint glow that always seems to be exuding from her small friend intensifies. She waves, and then with a jerk of her head leads both her and Lieve’tel to the back room, a room that is “Not my office, Allura, I don’t need an office –“ but none the less has a desk covered in parchment and ink and a pair of comfy armchairs, one of Scanlan’s lower quality instruments leaned against the wall in the corner.

“Allura, a pleasure to see you again,” Lieve’tel murmurs as she ducks through the door of the room, mantle scraping against the doorframe.

“You as well, Lieve’tel.”

Pike brushes some papers aside, and perches on the desk, legs swinging above the floor. “What’s up, Allura? Want me to call Kima down? I saw her this morning, she was stealing cinnamon from my pantry.”

“That would be good, Pike. I’m afraid, however, that this isn’t really a social visit.”

Her friend’s face drops at her tone.

“Ah. Is everything – everything alright?” She punches a fist into her hand, and grins darkly. “I can go bust out my armor and mace, rustle up Scanlan and Grog –“

Allura laughs, weakly. “I – you remember those students, I had told you about a few winter’s crests ago? The one’s killed by Ikithon’s negligence.”

Pike hums, and nods, the glow in her being flickering for a second.

“Turns out, not dead. Ikithon purposefully lied about their deaths, and is responsible for – gods, Pike, an enormous amount of trauma and torture that those kids went through. I’ve already talked to the rest of the Pansophical, and I’ve been given authority to arrest him for abuse of enchantment magic and unethical experimentation. I think – the possibility of this turning violent is high, Pike, based on what kind of man that bastard is.” She grins, darkly, and flares out her fingers. “Want to help me take him down?”

Pike stares at her for a moment, rapping her fingers across the desk, and then smiles just as darkly. “Oh, Allura – Sound’s like a plan. Want me to grab anyone else? Percy is out if we’re fighting, obviously,  but Vex and Keyleth would be up for it, if they're not too busy. Grog, obviously, could join us – Scanlan is out with Kaylie and her new girlfriend and the kids on a,” and she does finger quotes in the air, “bonding trip, so he’s out.”

“I was thinking Keyleth and Grog, quite honestly. Taking Vex as well might be overkill. I was going to ask Taryon, but as he’s technically a citizen of the Empire he would theoretically be committing treason, even if it was a rather righteous act of treason.”

Lieve’tel, standing by the door, nods at the two women, a faintly bemused expression on her face. “Pike, we can resolve what we were talking about later. I wish the two of you luck in your endeavors.” She blinks, and bows her head slightly, hands clasped together. “May the man you are apprehending soon be faced with the judgment of the Matron.”

The elven woman takes her leave, and Pike hops off the desk and leads Allura out of the temple and across the street to her and Scanlan’s home, chattering all the while. “D’you want to send a message to Keyleth, then, ask her to join us in Deastock and then find that man from there? Grog is just at home, he probably just woke up.”

Pike’s home is understated and small but still incredible, mainly from the random splashes of color on the outside that she’s fairly sure Keyleth and Grog had painted while _exceedingly_ drunk. It’s only two stories, with a small handful of rooms filled with paintings and throw blankets and pillows and carpets, all sorts of manners and knick-knacks.

It’s remarkably unlivable because of how much stuff they’ve crammed in here. She knows for a fact that when Scanlan is home they sleep in the magic mansion he can create, and when he’s not Pike and Grog and the twins sleep in a pile in the mess of blankets and pillows in the living room.

Grog, just as Pike predicted, is asleep on that aforementioned pile in the front room, but he wakes up as they enter through the front door, the layers of bells on it chiming in a discordant symphony.

“Hey, Pikey – Allura!” He rumbles, and gets up (and she thanks Corellon that he’s wearing pants, for once. She’s gotten enough accidental eyefuls of him naked for six lifetimes.) picking up and hugging Pike with a swoop.

“Hey Grog,” Pike says, and boops him on the nose.

“Grog. We’re going to fight a wizard, want to come?”

He grins, and she knows instantly that no other explanation is needed.

Twenty minutes later, Grog’s reading to go with the simple addition of his Titanstone knuckle gauntlets, and Pike’s crammed herself into her armor, mace draped over her shoulder like it’s weightless. (It’s not. Really, really, really isn’t. She almost dropped it on her foot and killed herself, the one and only time she tried to pick it up.)

On the way to Kima’s ‘official’ workplace, she sends a message to Keyleth.

“Hey. Going to fight a wizard. Bad guy, hurt kids, need to take him down. Meet us at Taryon’s house in Deastock in an hour?”

She keeps it to the point.

Keyleth’s voice comes to her mind a moment later.

“Oh, hey Allura! Yeah, I’ll be there. Are we like, killing him – wait, you can’t respond – See you soon! Wait, Dogwood, don’t climb that -”

The message cuts off as Keyleth talks to someone near her – she’s watching the Ashari kids, again, she surmises fondly.

Kima, of course, is raring to help them with the Ikithon situation.

There’s just one small issue.

“Look, Allura, you know I want to, love, but uh –“ and she gestures to the mound of paperwork coating her desk that’s spilled off it and onto the floor, “- I’m drowning here. He thought I, quote, still need to learn some time management skills, blah blah blah, I gotta finish it. But go get him, sweetheart.”

So her wife does not join them, on their murder adventure, but that’s okay.

The combined power of herself, and literal God-stoppers Keyleth, Pike, and Grog is more than enough to take Ikithon down.

 

They spend the night at Taryon’s house. It’s easier that way, even though she loathes even waiting another day, but they need their spells fresh and prepared for tomorrow.

Grog jokes, that morning, that the only spell he needs to prepare is rage.

Honestly, he’s not wrong. Sometimes she longs for the simplicity of being able to hit things really hard with an ax. Although – being able to turn Ikithon into a cockroach and step on him? While that won’t kill him, not within the limitations of the polymorph spell she uses, it would feel very, very nice.

Keyleth spends a spell to get them to Rexxentrum, and they make the few hundred-mile journey in gaseous form. It’s rather nice out. Pleasant.

Rexxentrum is one of the largest cities in Exandria, but it still pales in comparison to Vasselheim and Ank’harel.

Nice architecture, though. Hopefully nothing will be too badly damaged at the end of this.

The Cerberus Assembly operates in one of the massive towers that form the skyline of the city, and walking in they are immediately ushered into an audience with barely a word from her.

It’s convenient, being a fully-fledged member of the Arcana Pansophical, and one of the current heads. Gets her places.

Gets her friends places as well.

The assembly, at the current moment, had been in a meeting.

Clustered together. Convenient!

With a short curtsy, she and her friends present themselves before the group.

De’leth at the head of the table, Oremid Hass on one edge, Ikithon on another, his eyes widening slightly in idle realization at the sight of her, other Assembly members she doesn’t know or care to know at the other seats of the high table.

She grins.

“Trent Ikithon, you are accused of the abuse of enchantment arcana, experimentation on unconsenting sentient beings, the abuse of students, criminal negligence, and gross misuse of magic. Will you come quietly, or will I need to restrain you?”

Her voice, magnified by Pike’s cast thaumaturgy, echoes in the chamber as she watches the blood drain out of Ikithon’s face.

Behind her, she can feel the radiating heat as Keyleth lights up her hands, the clank of Pike’s mace as she hikes it up onto her shoulder, and the shifting sound of metal as Grog’s hands tighten around his battleax.

She has counterspell ready and cast the instant she sees Ikithon’s hands twitch under the table, and the man blanches as his teleportation spell falls through. With a flash of her own hands, there’s a wall of force in between her and her friends and the table of mages, just in time to stop the barrage of fire that streams from Ikithon’s mouth.

Seems like there is a fight, here, after all.

Not for long, though.

She just smiles at the Assembly as she chants the words to the anti-teleportation spell under her breath, and steps to the side to make room for the massive wings, limbs, and presence of Keyleth’s golden dragon form that fills the room, the frill on her head scraping against the ceiling as she roars.

After that, it’s not much of a fight.

Ikithon, the former Archmage of Civil Influence, abuser of children and orchestrator of part of the war with Xhorhas, dies in a blaze of dragonfire and a well-placed fist to the face.

The fellow Pansophical agents that she had called to this location earlier stream in once the fighting is done, taking in members of the Assembly for questioning while stepping in themselves to stabilize the now tenuous political structure of the city.

Pike, Keyleth, and Grog go home that night, but she spends nearly a week in the city, figuring out just how deep the corruption with the Assembly ran and restructuring some of the powers that had gone unchecked for far too long.

At the end of it, she doesn’t have to kill any more people. The city, and nation, is left for the better, with possible peace with Xhorhas a distinct possibility, depending on the will of the Bright Queen, and she teleports back to Yussah’s tower exhausted, hopeful, and smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GET WRECKT
> 
>  
> 
> next chapter will have blumenkrew in it, as will the last chapter exclusively. hope yall have fun reading this less-than-serious chapter.  
> there's going to be (another) sequel to this fic because ive been enabled by discussions on discord and that ones going to be Soft.  
> look out for an update monday night!


	7. Means everything to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> softness and light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains a brief description of sensory overloads and sensory sensitivity in general. hope you enjoy! next chapter up on thursday!

The three of them do not hear anything, positive or neutral or negative, from Allura or Yussah for a week after their visit to the house.

He hadn’t expected immediate action, but the not knowing makes him nervous, anxious, and it shows in the ever-increasing panic he feels that long, long week spent watching Eodwulf stress bake and Astrid twist ropes of molten sugar into form.

Yussah’s tower windows remain dark.

It’s three days into that week, long and exhausting to this point, with days of anxiety building into what feels like months of waiting compressed into the space of a few hours, that Astrid and Wulf, both just as anxious as he is but expressing it in different (and debatably healthier ways), that they drag him out of the shop and into the streets of Nicodranas.

They don’t disguise themselves, because if Ikithon knows they are here he knows they are here and an illusion isn’t going to stop that.

They look – different than how they used to. Wulf’s hair is much, much lighter under the sun of Nicodranas then it had ever been up north, and Astrid’s hair, while still just as short as she’s kept it since they were children, is styled differently, looser and curlier than she ever left it before.

He, he knows, looks, well -he spent eleven years practically motionless, and then five on the run and on the verge of death before meeting up with the Mighty Nein. He kind of looks it, even after these past couple months of eating semi-regularly and having more money than he’s ever seen before in his life.

Still probably recognizable, if Ikithon put his mind to it, but different enough to disappear into a crowd.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Out of everything he’s currently worried about, though, that only forms the backdrop. The most pressing worry, at the moment, is the practically ludicrous noise and crowd levels of the streets of Nicodranas as Wulf and Astrid lead him to some unknown destination, their hands locked in his as he leads them down the street.

He has no idea why there is this many people out and about. It’s terrible, honestly, and people keep brushing into him and everyone’s talking so loudly and he can hear the horses and carts and waves in the distance, constant noise that is verging on overwhelming him.

His hands tug at his friends grasp, and they let go in an instant, looking back at his face in concern.

He grimaces, fingers fluttering in short jerky movements at his sides, and a look of familiar understanding crosses Eodwulf’s face.

“We’re almost –“

He loses what Wulf says in the loud bray of a donkey carrying a cart, and the noise slams into him again, sharp and loud and terrible. Everything, for a moment, intensifies until it feels like he can smell every awful thing that’s happened on these cobblestones, hear arguing and the sound of hooves hitting street stones and the sunlight is unbearable, and his hands creep up towards his ears, still jerking in a desperate attempt to calm himself down.

Eodwulf says something to Astrid, but it’s once again lost in the ever-increasing drone of indistinguishable noise around him, and just as he shoves his hands over his ears and shuts his eyes tightly, there are hands around his waist, gently steering him somewhere, conversation, and then there’s a click and the world is blessedly, blessedly silent.

He takes his hands off his ears, and is met with only the sound of a cat purring, his own breath, and the fainter sounds of Astrid or Wulf shifting beside him.

A hand takes his, and he cautiously opens his eyes, to the dim light of Eodwulf’s purple tinted dancing lights.

They’re somewhere else, off the street – a back room somewhere, maybe, but there’s a pile of thick soft blankets on the ground with a few pillows tossed in, and there’s a faint air to the room that tells him the room is magicked to be silent.

He hums, deep in the back of his throat, and Wulf squeezes his hand.

“Sorry, _liebling._ There’s not usually this many people in that part of town, I think there’s a market going on a few blocks down.”

Eodwulf takes his hand and turns it palm side up, and starts tracing celestial glyphs with a finger, still talking.

“This is the bookstore we were leading you to. We know – the owner, Mrs. Brienne, she and her wife have known us since we started working at the candy shop and had some coin to spare. She deals with her own fair share of sensory issues, and offered us the use of her back room when Astrid had a panic attack, that first time, and we’ve been coming here ever since. They have a really good selection of foreign literature, too – Astrid found a copy of Corellon’s Fables, here, in Sylvan, and four weeks ago I found a used copy of Keysmith, have you ever read that? It was –“

Eodwulf keeps rambling, voice measured and low and calculated to help him calm down, and help it does as he relaxes, the overstimulation from outside fading into nothing as he sits in the dark and quiet and listens to his friend’s voice. Frumpkin's warm weight on his lap grounds him, as does Eodwulf's fingers tracing against his palm and the calm drone of his voice.

After about twenty minutes, Eodwulf’s moved on to talking about the differences in insects between Blumenthal and Nicodranas, “- they have this really cool species of moth here that’s almost as colorful as you think a butterfly would be, but it’s absolutely a moth, I saw the feathered antennae –“, he taps a quick melody out on Eodwulf’s hand, and the other man stops talking and smiles, gently.

He squeezes Wulf’s hand, because words aren’t going to work right now, he can tell, and both of them stand up and Wulf leads him back into the shop.

The shop is not as quiet as the room had been, but it’s quiet enough, the noise of the street and bustle outside deadened through double-paned glass and thick stone walls.

It smells like inks and parchment and _books_ , here, mingling with the faintest scent of potting soil from rows of plants and strange-looking cactuses lining the windowsills. Astrid is deep in conversation with the elven lady behind the counter, relaxed and smiling, and Eodwulf waves at her as he tugs him to a set of shelves towards the opposite wall.

On these shelves, nearly everything is written in Sylvan or Celestial and even a few in Abyssal that he can recognize but not read. He’s been trying to learn, to get Yasha to teach him, but they haven’t had much time.

With a slow hand, he traces the etched celestial glyphs across the spine of a few books, and glances back at Wulf, who’s grinning at him, silly and fond.

There’s a copy of _Rosebud_ , here, in the original Celestial. It’s a book that he had first read while at the academy, in those first few months, the story of a girl named Rose who had fallen in love with her two best friends while fighting an agent of the Chained Oblivion. It’s an ancient book, written during the Age of Arcanum, one of the only works of fiction from that time that survived the Calamity.

In retrospect, seeing as he fell face first in love with his best friends while reading this book, it makes sense why he had liked it so much.

His face is starting to turn red as he takes the book out and tucks it under his arm, already mentally counting out what gold he has in his pockets and whether it’s enough to purchase a copy in Celestial. He’s read the Common translation, before, but there had been weird phrasing, poetry and emotional impacts lost from the transition from lyrical Celestial to more plain-spoken Common.

Eodwulf’s wandered away to the craft-and-art-and-cookbook section, pawing through what looks to be a stack of discount sewing patterns, and Caleb wanders a bit before deciding on just the _Rosebud_ copy.

When he walks up to the counter, Astrid is still leaning on it, chatting amicably with the elven woman behind it whose thick coils of hair are pinned in intricate designs within the tresses of her hair. When she sees him approach, Astrid stops and grins, and he smiles, small but still present, back.

Words, he feels, still aren’t working. But –

It’s been years since he’s signed to anyone who could understand him. He signs to himself plenty, in times when he doesn’t want to or just can’t form words, but no one in the Mighty Nein currently know sign language other than Caduceus, and Caduceus’s knowledge of it is thirty years out of date in terms of slang and he keeps mixing Giant, Sylvan, and Common signs together to form what he calls his family’s specific brand of sign.

It’s cool, from a linguistic standpoint, but he and Caduceus can barely understand each other without having to resort to spoken Common or Sylvan. And Nott’s been trying to learn, but it frustrates her, not being able to bend her joints in the same way with goblin hands as she used to be able to with halfling one’s, different anatomies failing to line up in her head.

Astrid, though, knows sign, or at least knew sign, from the months he would spend nonverbal as a kid and the times while with Ikithon that his words would abandon him.

Her eyes follow his hands with a casual kind of recognition, and she nods once he finishes, hands settling back at his side.

“Hey, Joey, how much for the Celestial version of _Rosebud?”_ The shopkeeper checks something in the ledge in front of her, and flashes a smile at Astrid.

“That one’s been in here for months, now, thought it was never going to get sold. Not that many people that read Celestial here, and even fewer that want to read Old Celestial – that one’s seven gold, kiddo.”

His eyes widen, and in an instant, he has the required amount in his hand and he places them on the counter one by one, counting in Zemnian under his breath while his hand not holding the coins forms the signs.

Soon enough, he has the required amount of gold – and he makes sure, absentmindedly, that it’s actually gold and not the small quantity of platinum he still has in the bottom of his coin purse, or some of the copper pieces he had transmuted to gold while first learning with Nott that he had overpowered and hadn’t faded back yet.

The shopkeeper – Joey, he’s guessing – sweeps the gold into her hands and marks something down in the ledger. “Do you want me to wrap that for you, or get you a bag or something?” Her accent lilts on the consonants.

He shakes his head no, and she nods.

Astrid and Joey start talking again as he wanders away, clutching the book towards his chest and moving back towards where Eodwulf is still peering at a collection of old sewing patterns.

His friend looks up as he heads toward him, and beams, ears flicking slightly.

“B- Caleb, look at these –“ and he shoves a handful of loosely folded paper patterns at him, already turning to rifle more through the basket.

The ones that Wulf has shoved at him are a motley mix of Common and Elvish and Sylvan, and even a couple of ones in Undercommon that he recognizes, both by the glyphs of the language and by the style within.

Three of the pile he’s been handed are Xhorhasian patterns, a thicky embroidered skirt pattern and looser, gauzy robes and a shirt pattern, all three geometric in design with the familiar motifs of the dodecahedron and the lines he had gotten used to seeing in the capital.

Jester and Nott’s current outfits match these patterns very well, even if these seem to be at least a decade behind the current trend in Rosohna. His own coat that’s back at the Chateau matches these as well.

He hasn’t worn it in Nicodranas. It’s much too warm here, and while Nott and Jester can get away with wearing their more colorful and detailed garb here through virtue of their – larger personalities, that coat was just going to draw more attention to him than he wanted visible.

He’s just been wearing his old coat, these past few weeks. Cleaner, now, then it had ever been before after Caduceus had gotten his hands on it, but still the same worn leather and soft lining, the same arrangement of pockets, the same long sleeves that when paired with the fingerless gloves Beauregard had handed to him in Xhorhas after he had given the last of her bandages to her that cover his arms enough.

All three of them wear long sleeves, despite the warmer weather.

“There’s a bunch of old ones from Syngorn in here, the detailing on the robes is hilarious – and those looked so much like some of your friend’s clothes, I guess Xhorhasian fashion migrated into the empire?”

Ah.

Right.

He hasn’t – hasn’t told Astrid and Wulf the full extent of what had happened, the few weeks before he had returned to Nicodranas. He had mentioned little things, a bare touch on being lost in a country they did not belong in or blend into, about being war heroes, but he had skimmed over it in favor of talking about them.

And, now that he thinks of it – Wulf may have missed the memo entirely that he had been in Xhorhas at all. Might have been asleep.

Hm.

Something for when they get home, then.

Astrid, by the counter, is finishing up her conversation with Joey – finishing her conversation with Joey, it seems, because she’s walking over here now.

“Wulf, are you getting any of those patterns or are you just looking at them, because let me remind you, you broke the last of our good needles trying to make fancy shoelaces. Caleb, are you getting anything else or just that?”

He shakes his head, and Astrid nods.

“No, I’m just looking – these ones in Undercommon, don’t they look like Jester and Nott’s dresses? Isn’t that weird? I wonder if before the war there was more trade between Xhorhas and the Empire, and that’s where the style influence is coming from – oh, and that stuff Caduceus made for lunch a few days ago, he said that the stuff was from Xhorhas.”

Astrid, for a moment, just stares at Wulf, one eyebrow creeping up.

She glances at him, and he shrugs.

“Wulf.”

“Yeah?”

“You remember – you remember that Caleb talked about how he has in Xhorhas for a month, right? You were there, during that conversation?”

She keeps her voice low, as to not let Joey overhear them talking about Caleb being a theoretical foreign agent. Eodwulf’s eyes widen, and then he sheepishly glances away.

“Oh. Yeah. Yep, was definitely there, totally did not forget, nope!”

Astrid snorts, and he laughs almost soundlessly.

The walk back to their shop is decidedly less overwhelming than it had been earlier, helped by the fact that the streets are emptier and the sun is less glaring. Still, it’s a lot, and by the time they make it back inside he’s keyed up again, anxious and filled with energy without a place to put it.

The shop is closed, for the day, which means that when they head back in through the front door, he heads to the back and then upstairs immediately, finding their bedroom with practiced steps and then practically burying himself under the covers.

The shop, he’s figured out at this point, is warded by Eodwulf to hell and back. He was always decent at Abjuration, even if Ikithon had made him concentrate more on Illusions, but now, Wulf’s figured out a way to make this shop safe, safe in a way he hasn’t been able to feel in decades.

It’s quiet, in here. The wards deaden the sound outside, and everything here as the faintest edge of magic, wrapping him up and holding him in a constant soft embrace.

Astrid and Eodwulf settle on the bed after another minute, on either side of him, and he curls in the dark under the covers as his friends start to read _Rosebud_ aloud above him.

It’s dark, and quiet, and soft. These aren’t the same rough blankets that Astrid has spent hours trying to make softer and more bearable to their hypersensitivities at Ikithon’s cottage – they are well worn, made to be soft, and made softer by Astrid’s attentions. There’s maybe – eight, ten blankets on the bed, lighter and heavier ones enchanted to keep a person cool enough to sleep well and warm enough to be comfortable doing so, and the weight is incredible, and it’s dark and quiet and soft.

He falls asleep in between his two best friends that he’s found again, listening to Astrid’s soft voice read celestial with a musical lilt.

 

Four days later, Yussah and Allura knock on the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s o f t
> 
>  
> 
> if you read this, have liked this series, or just want to write :3 five times, leave a comment! thanks for reading, folks.  
> :3
> 
>  
> 
> new chapter of umbra will be up late tonight est!


	8. Maybe that's enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forever, and always, just maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive been awake for so many hours and working most of them. work is terrible. you know whats not terrible? this fic. enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She’s halfway through bagging pre-packed lemon candies when the wards on the house ping at the back of her mind.

Eodwulf had tweaked them, yesterday, so that they would have at least a little advance knowledge that they –

That Allura and Yussah were coming back.

She blinks as the alarm pings in her mind, and then brushes her hands off on her apron and ducks her head through the door to the back room, where Eodwulf’s sleepily draining a mug of coffee and Caleb’s sitting with his head pillowed on his arms, Frumpkin sitting almost directly on his head.

Wulf had had a rough night last night. Caleb had stayed up almost the entire night with him.

Wulf blinks at her as she pokes her head through, and then swears under his breath as he stands up wobbly, one hand reaching to grip onto the back of a chair while the other clutches his mug of coffee.

He nudges Caleb with one foot and he jumps, head jerking up and forcing Frumpkin to move onto the table.

“ _Was_ – alarm. What’s –“ he shoots to awareness in a matter of seconds, and then blinks as his mind registers the meaning of the warding ping.

She pats him on the shoulder as she enters the room, hands untying her apron and leaving it draped over a chair. She’ll get it later. It’s fine.

Together, the three of them go back to the front of the shop, Eodwulf leaning against the counter and Caleb standing near one of the corners with a direct line to the door.

They stand there in silence for the thirty seconds it takes for the bells on the door to ring and Yussah and Allura to push through.

Both look – satisfied.

She doesn’t trust that they are in their own minds.

She knows all too well what kind of things Ikithon can put into people’s heads.

Allura nods at them, and extends one hand, a single scroll sitting within.

“Trent Ikithon was killed while resisting apprehension, in full view of the Assembly. The Arcana Pansophical has stepped in, officially, to help settle the government of the Empire and the war while the kinks work themselves out – however, he is, most assuredly, dead. The Pansophical, under my advisement and judgment, is currently deliberating on what reparations can be made to you three for our previous malicious ignorance of Ikithon’s corruption and wrongdoing.”

She cocks her head, and her posture changes as some of the tension bleeds out of her.

“But on a less official note, he’s dead, and I killed him.”

 

He’s –

Can’t believe this yet.

She holds her hands still at her sides and nods towards Allura and Yussah, one hand – still still, because she’s repressing the shaking as much as she can – coming to rest on her Archeart symbol.

“Do you mind if I verify that?”

Their nods are all the confirmation she needs, and with a whisper of sylvan under her breath the truth spell spreads from her feet, encompassing everyone in this room.

She can feel as Caleb and Wulf fail to fall under the spell behind her, but that’s fine. Better, probably, that they can lie if they feel they have to.

She can feel, also, as Allura and Yussah purposely fail to resist its effects.

Well, then.

Allura nods at her.

“I can assure you, he’s dead. While apprehending him, alongside some friends of mine, members of the group Vox Machina, the encounter turned violent, and he was killed in the conflict.”

She –

Behind her, she can just hear Caleb suck in a breath behind clenched teeth, and sit down heavily on one of the chairs in the corner he’s occupying.

Gods.

Eodwulf sidles up next to her, hands still gripping the counter like a lifeline, and he stares at Allura, eyes hooded with dark bags underneath.

“You’re sure that he’s dead.”

She nods. “As sure as I can be. There is – little chance, if any, of him coming back. His remains were purified by the Everlight after the battle.”

He’s – he’s dead.

Actually, properly, dead.

And they’re alive.

She needs to – she can have a panic attack about this later. She needs to keep it together, right now.

“You said something about – reparations? I don’t understand.”

Yussah, after being given a look from Allura, steps forward.

“What Ikithon doing is against the boundaries of sane magic use set by the Arcana Pansophical after the Calamity, with his research into human experimentation and nonconsensual enchantment magic, doubly so with the fact that he was performing this magic on children. It is a failure of the Pansophical to have not realized this man’s treachery earlier. As part of an attempt at an apology for that oversight, the Pansophical will make every attempt to grant each of you some favor, as a way of beginning to repay their mistakes.”

A – a favor?

She has no need for favors.

She lost so much to that man, but what – he was good at hiding. Maybe Allura could have – should have realized, but –

She loves her life as it is now. It could be – better, maybe, but she doesn’t know how.

When she glances to the back of the room, Caleb’s fists are clenched tight in his lap, his mouth set in a firm line and his eyes verging on distant.

He’s dead. She knows, that, now.

Whatever they mean about favors can wait for tomorrow.

She keeps her voice forcibly light. “Thank you, then. If you could – give us a day, perhaps, to consider what – favors, or requests we might have that could be granted, we would be much obliged.”

Overly formal. She’s defaulting to it, because it’s a framework and script she knows how to conduct that won’t leave her floundering as much as she feels inwardly.

“Of course.”

Allura nods at her, and as she blinks, one hand reaching down to steady herself against the counter, both have exited the shop, bells chiming in their wake.

She takes a breath, and then another, and then walks to the door to close and lock it and activate the wards that spiral through the room in a warm wash on energy, soft and comforting and safe.

She turns, and stares right into the wide eyes of Eodwulf, still leaning against the counter, and Caleb, sitting in the corner with his head between his knees, gasping like he’s trying to restrain the urge to vomit.

For a long moment, all three of them are silent.

He’s –

They’re –

Free.

 

This is –

 

Eodwulf takes her hands in his, and grabs Caleb’s, as well, and tugs the both of them into the back of the shop, dragging them back up the stairs and into the bedroom.

He sits, dropping like a marionette with its strings cut onto the bed, and stares at the wall.

The wards are up, and they are here together, and Ikithon is dead.

Safe.

She hasn’t been safe in so long.

She might not even be safe now! She doesn’t – she doesn’t trust this, doesn’t trust her own magic, doesn’t know if she’s safe in here with her boys, in this life that she’s built – what if Ikithon is still alive. What if he finds them. What if – the other Archmages come for them, to tie up loose ends, she’s worked so hard to make a life for herself and try to live with what she had done and they aren’t safe, they aren’t, what if what if what if what if what if –

She tugs at her hair, sharp, and bites back a sob in the back of her throat.

There are hands on hers, then, tugging her hands away from her hair gently and holding them, and she lets the tears fall down her face as she starts to cry, silent sobs shaking her chest.

She scoots back so that she’s leaning against the back wall, at the head on their bed, and Wulf sits cross-legged in front of her, holding her hands in his as he murmurs something she’s not paying attention to under his breath.

Caleb’s pacing around the perimeter of the room, hands moving in intricate patterns with his spellbook hovering in front of him, and as he walks a dome starts to fall into place, shimmering arcane light building around the bed. As soon as it’s finished, he starts pacing again the opposite way, silver wire appearing from one of his pockets and being strung around the boundary of the dome.

Her tears quell, slightly, in the twenty minutes that Caleb spends pacing around the room.

His hands are shaking.

When he stops, finally, she pulls one of her hands from Eodwulf’s and extends it to him, open palm.

He steps forward, face blank, and the curls himself up next to them in the bed, face still blank but hands now shaking as he lets himself settle.

Okay.

Okay.

They need to –

She’s calmer, now. Allura was telling the truth. Ikithon is –

Is dead.

The Pansophical wants to repay them for the years and lives they lost while in his grasp.

That doesn’t – it doesn’t mean anything to her. She doesn’t need a favor like that. She knows Wulf doesn’t, either.

But Caleb –

He might?

He –

She should really just ask.

Caleb’s curled into her side, now, face buried in her clothes and hugging her and Wulf both. She pets the back of his head, gently, and laughs a little at the almost cat-like noise he makes in the back of his throat.

“ _Liebling_ , hey.”

He extricates himself from her side, just enough to peer up at her, and she smiles down at him, a sad and hopeful thing.

“What Allura said, about favors. We – I don’t mean to speak for Wulf, but I don’t need anything.”

“I don’t need anything but this.”

“Yeah. But, Caleb – what you had mentioned, before. With what problems your friends were having – could this – could they help?”

Caleb blinks, and she can practically see the thoughts starting to race through his mind.

“ _Ja_ , maybe – if they could – hm.”

His brows furrow, and he slides back down against her, head now pillowed on her thigh as he stretches out in the bed.

Thinking about that – that can wait for later.

She doesn’t exactly know where they stand, right now. If they are falling back into the three-of-them who are best friends and in love with each other but didn’t talk about it, or are just former-best-friends reunited and best-friends again but still not talking about being in love with each other, maybe, or maybe just straight up in love with each other and needing to talk about it.

She needs to calm down, a little bit. That didn’t even make sense inside her own head.

But – they have until tomorrow to think about death, and about living free of Him, and about what Caleb could ask for to help his family.

Right now, they have this, and they have each other, cuddling into each other in a bed full of blankets that she and Wulf had made together and enchanted and built, in this house and life that they’ve made a space for Caleb in, and maybe that’s enough for now.

Maybe, just maybe, it will be enough forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey folks! hope u enjoyed this chapter.
> 
> feel free to leave a comment because every comment i get makes me cry a little bit (or ... a lot a bit)


	9. Loose Ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wish fufillment? yeah, probably.
> 
> but this is my au house!
> 
> happy endings only here

Caleb outlines his plans, in regards to the favors that the Pansophical feels that they owe them, and Astrid and Eodwulf both agree with him, that this –

He does not truly believe that Ikithon is gone yet. He knows all too well, now, how people can twist the boundaries between the soul and the body and come back again, but for now, he is dead, and maybe that’s enough for him to live a life beyond revenge.

Maybe.

He’ll see.

When Allura and Yussah come back, the next day, he’s pushed his way through a sleepless night to avoid the nightmares and memories, and he knows that Astrid and Wulf did the same, because they spent the night playing card games on the kitchen table.

“Lady Vysoren,” he nods, and Allura waves a hand.

“You can just – it’s Allura. Just Allura.”

Yussah folds his hands together, tightly, and gives a faint smile to the three of them.

“As we said previously, the Pansophical is willing to grant whatever requests they have in their power to fulfill, as an apology for their ignorance. While I am not part of the Pansophical, I am helping them with this matter. Now, do you have any requests, now? Or do you need more time to deliberate?”

He swallows, and after exchanging a reassuring glance with Astrid and Eodwulf, steps forward, past the gate in the counter and into the front portion of the shop.

“They – um.”

“Eodwulf and I have no need for favors.”

“Right. But I – I do. Not for myself. But for some of my – family,” he stops, and blinks his eyes.

He’s said that aloud before, but every time still sends a small shock to his core.

His family, once, was him and his parents, and then it was Astrid and Eodwulf and their parents, and then it was just him, and then him and Nott, and now –

Him, and Nott, and Beauregard and Jester and Fjord and Caduceus and Yasha and Yeza and Luc, Astrid and Eodwulf – others, too, in smaller ways, Calianna and Kiri and Shakaste and Keg and Nila and Twiggy, all of these people that have wormed their ways into his heart.

People found, and people lost.

Mollymauk would have loved Nicodranas.

He blinks that thought away as something to be considered later, and swallows again.

He’d gone to the Chateau, last night, to make sure that he wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes, here, that he was allowed to ask for help for them.

There are many issues facing his friends, but for now – he’s picked the three biggest ones.

They might be unfixable, by these people, but –

It is worth doing, to try.

“Nott, whom you have met before, Yussah – the goblin – well, she was not always a goblin –“

 

He tells them the story of a halfling mother killed and brought back maliciously, of a husband manipulated by Assembly mages, of a son being brought to Nicodranas to keep him out of the war.

“That – that is something we can help with,” Allura sighs, and smiles at him, almost lopsided. “I, myself, am not capable of casting True Polymorph in a way that allows it to be permanent, but with the combined efforts of myself, Yussah, and perhaps – Scanlan, do you think? Or perhaps J’mon would help, they owe me a favor from the last incident within Marquet.”

“I’m sure Scanlan would be willing. He does have experience, with that sort of – more avant-garde use of magic.”

Allura chuckles, lightly, and nods.

“That is a favor we can grant, Mr. Widogast. What are your other requests?”

Alright, then.

One problem solved.

He could have – years from now, if he studied for months and months of time that they don’t have, he could have helped Nott back to her real form himself.

But he knows that that is time they wouldn’t get.

Item two.

“Fjord, the half-orc you have met previously – he is currently trapped in an arcane pact with a demigod who is angling for his release from his prison. The information that we currently have on him is that the entity is known as Uk’otoa, a creation of the Cloaked Serpent currently locked away under the ocean. Fjord was saved from drowning through the unwilling creation of a pact with this entity, and he wants out. Currently, the entity is sending him a constant barrage of nightmares, with lasting physical and mental effects that bleed into his waking reality. We – we’ve tried to get the pact to dissolve, but it’s not working. If you know of – any way, to dissolve an unwilling pact, or to at least keep that creature from my friend's mind –“

He bites his nails into the skin of his palms as he talks.

It hadn’t been this bad, in Xhorhas, but here in Nicodranas, this close to the ocean, this close to the final seal –

Every night that he’s spent with his friends as opposed to here, Fjord had woken up screaming, vomiting saltwater and blood.

These past few days, the visions had started to creep out of his dreams and into waking moments of terror.

He had nearly attacked Jester, the other day, and had spent the next eight hours locked in his bedroom.

They need to fix this before it kills their friend.

Allura eyes, as he’s talking, widen and then narrow, and then she closes them tightly and nods.

“I will – that is something we can at least help with, in the short term, and in the long term, I have a friend that had dealt with a similar issue, many years ago. Kashaw would be more than willing to work with your friend to help escape his pact. His situation, while different – of a more divine nature, than one of a warlock - was similar in its effects.”

Okay.

Short term help is – good, for now.

Last thing.

“Finally, my friend Caduceus – he has spoken with you about this previously, Yussah, but we thought it prudent to mention it again. His home, a temple to the Wildmother in the Savalierwood, is being slowly taken by the corruption that pervades that area. We ask for assistance in figuring out and stopping that corruption.”

“That’s in the Graying Wildlands, correct? I believe Keyleth was already looking into that of her own accord – I can enlist Ozwynn and Ryn to help with that, as well. Consider it done.”

Oh.

That was –

Easier, than he had been expecting.

 

Days, after that one, pass like water through open fingers.

Yussah summons him and Nott to his tower, a few days after he had requested help to save her from a lifetime of being wrong, and Allura is there, a vibrantly colored gnome at her side.

“This is Scanlan Shorthalt, member of Vox Machina. We believe, as of now, that we can restore you to your halfling self, Mrs. Brenatto.”

There’s more conversation, that happens then, but it’s not any that he remembers afterward, his keen memory be damned.

Because at the end of those hours, spent in a ritual room in Yussah’s tower, his friends halfling form remains despite a dispel magic concentrated directly at her, and he has the pleasure of watching his best friend feel tanned halfling skin and rounded ears and her own hands, for the first time in almost two years.

Luc arrives the next day, and Nott and Yeza both get to hold their son.

 

His request for Fjord goes just as well.

Two days after watching Nott be restored to her proper self, he drags Fjord to Yussah’s tower. His friend, that day, was two days into not sleeping for fear of nightmares and visions, hands shaking as he clutches Caleb’s own in a display of clinginess that neither of them, even a month ago, would have allowed.

Allura is there, once again, looking tired but more triumphant with every day that passes.

“Caleb, Fjord. This is Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski De Rolo the Third, you can call him Percy, and this is Kashaw Hydris. We have, at least for now, a short term fix to your problem, and ideas for a long term solution. Percival, if you would?”

The white-haired man nods, and pushes his strange glasses further up his nose. “Kashaw and I both have – experience, let's leave it at that, with extraplanar manipulation by foreign beings. This bracelet, should, in theory, limit access to your consciousness to only you, and whoever you actively choose to let in, in case there are any gods you worship that you may wish to talk to. It shouldn’t hurt, it’s just enchanted silver and mithril.”

The bracelet that Percy holds out is a thin band of silver and a lighter gray metal, etched with tiny runes and vines carved along the length of it.

Fjord turns it over, in his hands, and slides it on with only the faintest hesitation.

The instant it’s on, there’s a silver ripple over his friend's skin, and he closes his eyes tightly as his form shifts for a moment, before solidifying again.

When his eyes blink open, dark blue irises replace golden ones.

“Fuck – sorry, Ma’am,” he whispers and flexes his wrist in the familiar motion to summon his falchion.

For a moment, nothing happens.

And then –

A vine spills it’s way out of Fjord’s palm, and manifests itself into a blade familiar, the one that Caduceus has been trying to get fixed for months, now, and Fjord grins, soft and relaxed and exhausted.

The blade falls away, and a single petal drifts to the ground.

Uk’otoa is still an issue.

But for now –

Fjord sleeps that night without dreams.

 

They make plans to return to Xhorhas a few days later.

Yussah, as he had before, has granted them free use of his teleportation circle.

He knows –

Xhorhas, in some aspects, is a home. There is a house there, that he hopes to bring Astrid and Eodwulf to, one day after this war. Nicodranas, now, is also a home.

He is more than willing to put in the effort to live in both at the same time.

But the day before they leave, he spends six hours away from the Coast entirely, with Caduceus and Keyleth and some others he doesn’t know.

In those hours, Keyleth does – something.

He is not a cleric, or a druid. He doesn’t really understand the ways of the earth, beyond what he knows about leylines and the fey.

The look on Caduceus’s face, though, as he watches the creeping vines and corruption dissolve into dust is more than worth his own confusion.

Caduceus returns with them to Xhorhas.

“That is – my home, yes, Mr. Caleb. But my place is with you all.”

It is strange, having this many people that he’s tied himself to.

Strange and terrible and wonderful, in equal measure.

 

Despite his – well. Less than vehement protests, Astrid and Eodwulf depart with them for Xhorhas.

They shop, they promise him, will hold for the days or weeks that they are gone.

They have just found him, they do not say. They don’t want to let him go that fast.

Silently, he agrees.

He would happily never let the two of them out of his sight again.

Xhorhas is much the same, despite the fact that they’ve been gone for weeks.

Not entirely the same.

There’s a rather more jovial mood, in the city of Rosohna.

It’s not as much as a shock as it should be when he learns the Empire has brokered peace, with the return of any beacons previously kept under their lock and key, of any Xhorhassian captives and citizens locked away in their cells.

The darkness above the Ashkeeper Peaks lifts for the first time in months.

He –

Inadvertently, it seems, his past caught up to him, and ended this war.

Allura’s guilt at not noticing earlier may have saved millions of lives.

 

He is completely, utterly, unsurprised that out of all the things his friends have wrought in this house, the hot tub is Astrid’s favorite. The garden, to his bemusement, is Eodwulf’s.

They spend the first four days in Xhorhas alternating between the arcane light and warmth of the hot tub and the divine sunlight of the tree, and he –

He has stopped a way. He has made a life, just maybe, free from Ikithon’s presence.

He is still very, very much in love with his two best friends.

And if he’s reading this right, they still love him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! final chapter of this will probably go up on tuesday or wednesday. i have more ideas for fics set at various points in this verse, so be on the lookout for those eventually!
> 
> and hey, leave a comment if you want! or don't, im not in charge here.
> 
> :3


	10. Eternity of Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look to the figurative past, and the actual future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, folks.  
> thanks for coming along with me on this ride.
> 
> this chapter contains, first, a reworked version of the last chapter of Black Currant so that it fits more solidly into the timeline i managed to establish in this fic. Secondly, it contains a new chapter, that wraps up a (spoilers!) happy ending.
> 
> thank you, again, so much for reading.
> 
> Enjoy! :3

Caleb has been in Nicodranas again for a month when he gets the first inklings that Astrid and Wulf are planning something.

He and his friends – they had decided to split the difference, between all of their locales. It’s only been a couple of weeks, after Ikithon – died. Because he did. They are safe. But together, as a group – some had gone back to Xhorhas to stay, at least for the time being, while others are in Nicodranas. He can make the trip himself, now, and has already done so, showing Astrid and Wulf the house and the land he’s slowly making a home for himself in, but so far they’ve spent most of the time in Nicodranas.

His friends don’t object, even though it means they see him less often. They do not begrudge him wanting to spend time with newly reunited friends.

Still, still – only friends, he tells himself, and tries not to think of why that thought makes him sad.

But his friends – they are planning something, he’s sure of it. Because he has been spending the past few weeks sleeping on Astrid and Eodwulf’s stupidly comfortable couch, but these past few days Astrid has been making excuses as to why he couldn’t stay the night. Telling him that the living room is too messy, that she and Wulf managed to get citric acid on the cushions, that powdered sugar got into the floorboards and there were ants – reasons that are, at least to him, hard to believe when he knows for a fact that Wulf, at least, still knows prestidigitation.

Today had dawned bright and beautiful, with nary a cloud to be seen in the sky, and he’s making the usual walk to their candy store. Jester and Caduceus had been awake but were occupied with trying to teach Nugget some new trick.

Everyone else is still in Xhorhas.

Which means he is by himself, this morning, and the air is scented with salt and the ever-increasing scent of sugar and spices the closer he gets to the shop.

It’s nine in the morning when he pushes open the door to the shop, Frumpkin curled around his shoulders – or tries to, because the door is still locked.

He grumbles to himself and feels the top of the doorframe for the spare key that he knows is up there. He would normally be aghast at such lax security, especially for them, but the lock on this door is enchanted to only open with certain people holding the key and he is one of the three people that can even open this door.

He’s fairly sure that the key isn’t even needed, and that Eodwulf just enchanted it so that he would have to hop to reach the door frame.

He touches the key to the doorknob, and the knob twists before he can even turn the key, the metal disappearing from his hand and presumably reappearing on top of the frame.

The inside of the shop is dark, the arcane lights unpowered and heavy curtains blocking the light from coming in through the windows.

It’s strange – the shop doesn’t open until noon or later, depending on the day, but by this time Astrid has usually started the work of cleaning the eating area and preparing the day’s candy.

Everything is quiet, and dark.

There’s a thin line of light coming through the door to the back of the shop, and he heads behind the counter to the door, letting himself in to the living room that is lit from the windows overlooking the scraggly backyard behind the shop.

This room as well is empty, the couches covered in their now normal array of blankets and pillows and thin layers of cat hair, but there is a note and a piece of candy suspiciously placed on the center of the table in the corner.

He grabs the candy before he reads the note – one of Astrid’s newer image candies, with a small slightly wonky cat face that nonetheless resembles Frumpkin and the scent of black currant that brings a smile to his face despite the strangeness of the situation.

The note is written in Sylvan, strangely enough, and he untwists the handwriting in his mind.

Astrid wrote this. Wulf’s handwriting is far, far better.

              _Caleb –_

_Do you know what day it is? I’m sure that you do, given how good you still are at keeping time. But do you remember? Light shining through the fields. The taste of sugar and magic fresh on our tongues. It is bittersweet remembering, but it is a memory of hope that was lost and then found again. It’s Elvendawn, liebling._

There’s a note underneath Astrid’s scrawled Sylvan in Eodwulf’s careful script, that reads _Follow the candy,_ with a small smiley face drawn on the bottom.

He hadn’t – he hadn’t forgotten that it was Elvendawn, but it’s been so long since he had been allowed to celebrate it that he had pushed it aside.

It is bittersweet, those memories of home, but he has spent weeks mourning his parents and childhood in the company of the only two other people who understand, and that mourning has given him space to think of his parents without immediately succumbing under the weight of his own guilt.

There is another piece of candy wrapped in thin and glossy gauze set at the bottom of the stairs to the rest of the house, and another a few steps above that.

He takes the stairs slowly, his cat still curled around his shoulders. The candy trail continues up the stairs, and then past the tiny kitchen and into the slightly cracked door that leads into their bedroom.

He takes a second to listen and is rewarded with the faintly muffled sound of Eodwulf’s laughter and Astrid’s voice, words in Zemnian that are just outside of his range for him to comprehend but send a pang of familiarity through him.

This seems like a rather elaborate set up for an Elvendawn celebration, but he’s honestly not sure what else this could be.

(There is something that he hopes it could be, but he doesn’t bother to entertain that thought).

He pours the candies that he has collected up to this point into a spare pocket of his coat – notably cleaner, now, then it had been for years. There was very little chance that people were going to be looking for him, not since Ikithon’s death, and the layers of dirt and homelessness that he had worn as a defense were unnecessary. It was still ratty, and still smells like the spell components that he has stuffed into his pockets, but it no longer radiated the filth that it had accumulated before he had gotten his new coat in Xhorhas. He still prefers this one, which is why he’s wearing it. The other one was more of a futile attempt to blend in.

The final piece of candy that he picks up, just outside the door, is placed on a floorboard that creaks when he steps on it, the faint sounds behind the door stopping abruptly.

Strangely enough, the cat in this piece looks less like Frumpkin and more like a bean.

He snaps Frumpkin down to the floor and pushes open the door, the brighter light inside making him blink for a moment.

All the curtains in the bedroom have been flung open, and they sway with the sea-scented breeze that comes in through the cracked windows.

There’s also a series of light globules swirling through the room, warm yellow in color, that come to twirl around his head for a moment before settling in the corners of the room, lighting it even more.

Astrid and Wulf are seated on edge of the bed, facing the doorway, and both of their faces radiate nervousness.

He quirks an eyebrow and frowns, scanning the room. Nothing seems out of place – the altar to the Archeart has its usual accruement of trinkets and prayer items, with a few new buttons having been donated from Nott and the ever-present pile of candy.

Astrid shares a quick glance with Eodwulf. “ _Hallo, liebling_. Happy Elvendawn!” Her voice tilts up at the end, as if she was asking a question.

“Is everything alright?” He asks, stepping tentatively into the room. It is a holiday, but Astrid and Wulf both look and seem too nervous for that to merely be the case.

Wulf nods, and pokes Astrid in the side, who scowls at him and nudges him back.

There’s a flurry of whispered conversation, and he catches a few words – “Tell him,” – “No, you do it,” – “Frumpkin,” – “Where did you,” – and he frowns again, glancing down at where Frumpkin has started to clean his face with his paw at his feet.

The whispers stop, and Eodwulf faces him, rolling his eyes.

Then, “Caleb.”

He tilts his head. “ _Ja_?”

“I’m not doing what Astrid wants me to do –“Eodwulf dodges another poke from Astrid and continues, shuffling away from her slightly on the bed, “ – because I think it’s dumb and overly confusing, grandiose gestures aside.”

Astrid folds her arms over her chest and pouts, almost. “You got to do the candy thing, why can’t –“

“The candy thing was a good idea, this is just confusing –“

“You have no sense of adventure, jeez, Wulf –“

He rubs a hand over his eyes and sighs, and Astrid and Wulf both shut up, slightly sheepish looks on their faces.

“But anyways – Caleb.”

He sighs, again, and meets Eodwulf’s gaze.

“Yes, _liebling_?”

Eodwulf opens his mouth, as if to start, and then shuts it again, turning to look at Astrid in seeming desperation.

She gestures at him, frantically, and doesn’t say anything.

He’s – he really doesn’t know what’s going on, here.

Eodwulf closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“AstridandIareinlovewithyoustillandalsodoyourememberthattimewhenIproposed-“ He gets out, too fast to understand, before Astrid places a hand over his mouth and cuts off the ramble.

She keeps her hand there even as she looks him in the eyes.

“We’re in love with you,” she says, and he –

First, he pinches the inside of his palm, and decides that the pain means that he isn’t dreaming.

Then, he blinks, and blinks again, and says, faintly, “What –“

“We always have been. And then you were – you were dead, or well, not dead but we thought you were – whatever. But you’re alive? And I know we got married without you, but I’m still in love with you and so is Wulf and you’re here, and alive – Caleb –“

His thoughts are so quiet, for the moment.

He looks down at his hand, at that last piece of candy that he had grabbed, and realizes that the shape inside is not a wonky cat that looks like a bean.

That’s – a heart, he thinks, and when he glances back up at Eodwulf and Astrid both of them are staring at him.

“I thought –“he gets out, and then stops again, too overwhelmed to speak.

Astrid finally releases her hand from Wulf’s mouth.

“We got married without you, Caleb, but you were always – the day with the trader, all those years ago. I said that we – that we should all get married, and have a candy shop – and we thought you were gone, Caleb, so we did it without you but you aren’t gone. And we are so, so in love with you, and we missed you so much – this isn’t.” He stops and looks to Astrid.

She picks up his thread, and says, “This isn’t a proposal, because it’s been so long and we would – if you want in the future, maybe, because we want to but we would – do you want to go on a date?” She finishes, and Eodwulf huffs a tiny laugh.

Frumpkin, at his feet, nudges himself into his leg.

His voice is faint, when he speaks, but clear and seems to almost echo in the small space of their bedroom. “I – ah – yes?”

He blinks, certain in the knowledge that his face is beet red.

“I’m – I’ve been in love with you both since before the academy. Of course I want to – I thought, since you got married –“Astrid’s face falls, the longer he goes on talking.

“That’s – shit.” She scrubs a hand over her face.

Her other hand has stayed clenched by her side, this entire time, and he watches as she reaches it out to him, palm skyward, and uncurls her fingers.

There is a ring sitting there, identical to the ones that he’s seen on Astrid and Eodwulf’s hands since the first time he saw them here.

“Three people can get married, here. Well, anyone can, really, as long as it’s consensual and everyone’s of age – it’s really fascinating, the difference that having an unrestricted pantheon makes in governmental laws,” she starts, and Eodwulf nudges her back on track with a fond smile.

“Right – we got married, yeah, but you were always supposed to be part of that. It was never meant to be just me and Wulf, Caleb.”

Eodwulf swipes a tear off his cheek with his thumb. “And it’s been a long time, so you don’t need to say yes today or tomorrow or even months from now, but – go on a date with us?”

Caleb can feel a tear snaking it’s way down his own cheek, and then another close behind.

He takes a step forward, and then another, and takes the ring out of Astrid’s offering hand.

It fits on his finger like it had been made with him in mind.

He supposes that it has.

He gives them both, his two best friends that he is achingly in love with, a nod, and ignores the tears streaming down his face in favor of the smile that’s bursting across it.

It is Elvendawn, today, and he is sitting in a bedroom on a quilt that he knows Astrid made herself, blues and reds and yellows and greens making a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors that twist into something soft and heavy. There is light streaming through the windows, an oceanic breeze caressing the back of his head, and two hands clasped tight in his own.

A ring on his finger, a yes on his tongue, and hope brewing bright and vibrant in his heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three weeks into a stay in Xhorhas –

They’ve been switching, recently.

A couple of weeks, with him in Nicodranas at the shop, while the rest of his friend either stay at the house – Fjord, sometimes, Beau usually, Nott and Yeza and Luc almost always, Yasha as well – at the Blooming Grove – Caduceus, and sometimes Yasha, and sometimes Fjord – or at the Chateau – Jester, and again sometimes Fjord and Beau.

 

But – that digression aside, on where his family’s put down roots, he splits his time between staying with Astrid and Eodwulf in Nicodranas and staying with them at the house.

Always with them.

They have – they can be alone, whenever they want, but he doesn’t want to leave them in another country while he’s gallivanting off with his peculiar band of weirdos.

He spent sixteen years without them.

He wants to – cherish this time with them.

And three weeks into a stay in Xhorhas, in their house, he’s sitting underneath the tree that Caduceus raised out of the dirt, sharing a basket of fruit that Jester had brought with her when she had tumbled through the portal from Nicodranas this morning.

It’s been over a year since they proposed.

Now, he’s sitting under a tree, the taste of strawberries fresh on his tongue, twisting his wedding ring around his finger and staring up at the daylight spells still holding fast in the branches of the tree above them.

Astrid’s humming on his left side, Eodwulf singing mumbled lyrics on his right, and he’s pressed between them in a sandwich of happiness.

Even his inner voice sounds fond and drenched with contentment.

It’s kind of –

Kind of wonderful.

Today is a worship day, in Rosohna, and in a few hours the sky will brighten and the sun will shine.

He knows that Beauregard and Yasha and Caduceus will join them upstairs, to soak up the sunlight that Rosohna lacks, despite being so welcoming in other ways.

It’s the anniversary of the day the war officially ended.

There’s a lot to celebrate.

If he focuses, he can just faintly here Nott yelling something, below – not frantic or anxious yelling. Just normal, excited yelling – her voice is cut off by the sound of something exploding, and the vibration echoes through the soil he’s dug his bare feet into.

“-‘re okay! Luc, do that again, but slower –“ he hears, and muffles a grin in the crook of Eodwulf’s neck as he leans into him.

They’re safe. Probably just trying to teach Luc about lab safety before teaching him the basics of alchemy, with copious amounts of fake explosions.

If there’s one thing he can say about Nott and Yeza – there are so many things he could say about Nott and Yeza – they’re very enthusiastic.

They’re all safe.

The war is over, and his friends are safe.

Nott is a halfling once more, and wears dresses again, and buttons that clack and echo as she moves in wonderful little harmonies.

Uk’otoa, through some angling – hah, he thinks, he should save that one – by Keyleth and Kashaw and some others, had been effectively returned to baseline, behind more seals then before. Fjord dreams of vines, now, instead of brine.

Keyleth had, as well, worked with Caduceus to save his home. He splits his time between there and here, now, waiting for his family to return. He hasn’t seen them yet, but it’s only been a year. He knows, for a fact, how long firbolgs live, and how a year to Caduceus and his family is pocket change.

He’s worked tirelessly to exploit Yussah’s circle in the past year, and with Essek’s help shortening the time frame on the dunamantic side, he’s built a permanent teleportation circle in the basement.

They can go almost anywhere, now, and still get home. Even if he’s tapped – Caduceus had picked up a spell that lets him travel through trees, somewhere, somehow, despite it not being a cleric spell _at all, and that’s very confusing, you know that?_

His tall friend had just smiled.

But – anyways.

He’s warm and sitting in dappled sunlight with a purring cat across his lap and his husband on one side, his wife on the other, and he is happier than he thinks he’s been in over a decade.

“Caleb?”

Eodwulf’s voice vibrates through his skull from where he’s pressed his head into his neck, and he hums, trying to match the same pitch.

“Don’t fall asleep on me, _liebling_ , it’s not even noon yet.”

He’ll do what he wants, thank you very much.

“Caleb,” Astrid whispers, and nudges him with her toes.

Fine.

He peels himself away from Eodwulf’s neck, and blinks in the light, frowning in fake dismay.

“I will sleep if I want to sleep, thank you –“

Stops, because Astrid is staring at him with a devilish look in her eyes, and –

He knows that look.

Knows that look intimately, in more ways than one.

He manages to dodge just in time as she springs towards him, hands outstretched and fingers twitching, and he coughs out a laugh as he jolts upwards, feet taking him the balance on one of the exposed tree roots.

Eodwulf isn’t so lucky, and he falls over under the weight of their wife as she starts to tickle him, practically cackling.

“Caleb, avenge me,” Eodwulf fake-groans, and his husband collapses face down into the dirt, before rolling over and tickling Astrid right back.

They are going to feel that, later, in old injuries, but right now it’s bright and warm and hilarious.

He snaps Frumpkin into existence – still raven shaped from a prank he had been playing on Fjord, last week, and sends his familiar into the sky, his feathers growing fainter and fainter until he’s just a dot at the edge of his vision.

He sits down against the tree trunk, and blinks his awareness up above.

He spends twenty minutes watching the stars through Frumpkin’s eyes as he feels himself being settled back against Eodwulf and Astrid, positioned between the two of them once again.

He blinks back, just to check in, and Astrid and Eodwulf are laughing at something Beau’s said, Caduceus and Yasha sharing a teapot with Nott and Yeza and Luc in the corner, Fjord and Jester in the tree above them, presumably planning something, though he doesn’t know what, not yet.

He blinks his sight back to his raven, and watches light descend over the city for the first time in weeks, dark stone and wood washing with a golden glow.

It’s beautiful.

He can feel, down below, as his partners take his hands between theirs.

 

 

Frumpkin circles the city once, and then twice, and then dives back down to the tree as the sunlight starts to fade back into starlight.

When he opens his eyes, he’s alone again with Astrid and Eodwulf, and the stars are back in full force.

He squeezes their hands, and lays back, head pillowed on the grass.

They lay down next to him.

And together –

Together, they stare into eternity.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is a labor of love, and I'm still very very much in awe that people have liked it as much as they have. Thank you so much for reading, for commenting. Thank you to my girlfriend, who doesn't watch critical role, for lettings me rant to her about my fanfic, and thank you to the blumenkrew server for being a Very Enthusiastic and Vibrant cheering section.
> 
> There are more fics in the works for this verse, but most of them are things that are inserted into the established narrative along the way. If you have any requests, for things you'd like to see written about in this verse, leave a comment! I'll probably do it, to be quite honest.
> 
> They deserve a soft epilogue.
> 
> :3

**Author's Note:**

> this will be longer than Black Currant, by pure virtue that this one has a plot. Enjoy!
> 
> title generated using this (http://generatorland.com/usergenerator.aspx?id=22501) so thank you hozier


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